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DAVID LEVINSKY 







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THE RISE OF 

David Levinsky 

A NOVEL 

BY 

Abraham cahan 



HARPER y BROTHERS PUBLISHERS 

NEW YORK AND LONDON 




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SEP I i 19)7 


The Rise of David Levinsky 

Copyright, 1917, by Harper & Brothers 
Printed in the United States of America 
Published September, 1917 


©CI.A470975 



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CONTENTS 


PAGE 

BOOK I — Home and School i 

BOOK II — Enter Satan 25 

BOOK III — I Lose My Mother 49 

BOOK IV — Math^da 63 

BOOK V — I Discover America 83 

BOOK VI — A Greenhorn No Longer 113 

BOOK VII — My Temple 145 

BOOK VIII — The Destruction of My Temple .... 185 

BOOK IX — Dora 217 

BOOK X — On the Road 309 

BOOK XI — Matrimony 351 

BOOK XII — Miss Tevkin 401 

BOOK XIII— At Her Father’s House 449 

BOOK XIV — Episodes of a Lonely Life 499 



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BOOK I 

HOME AN,D SCHOOL 



THE RISE OF 

DAVID LEVINSKY 


CHAPTER I 

S ometimes, when I think of my past in a superficial, 
casual way, the metamorphosis I have gone through 
strikes me as nothing short of a miracle. I was bom and 
reared in the lowest depths of poverty and I arrived in 
America — in 1885 — with four cents in my pocket. I am 
now worth more than two million dollars and recognized 
as one of the two or three leading men in the cloak-and-suit 
trade in the United States. And yet when I take a look at 
my inner identity it impresses me as being precisely the 
same as it was thirty or forty years ago. My present 
station, power, the amount of worldly happiness at my 
command, and the rest of it, seem to be devoid of sig- 
nificance. 

When I was young I used to think that middle-aged 
people recalled their youth as something sieen through a 
haze. I know better now. Life is much shorter than I 
imagined it to be. The last years that I spent in my native 
land and my first years in America come back to me with 
the distinctness of yesterday. Indeed, I have a better rec- 
ollection of many a trifle of my childhood days than I have 
of some important things that occurred to me recently. I 
have a good memory for faces, but I am apt to recognize 
people I have not seen for a quarter of a century more 
readily than I do some I used to know only a few years ago. 

I love to brood over my youth. The dearest days in 
one’s life are those that seem very far and very near at once. 

3 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 

My wretclied boyhood appeals to me as a sick child does to 
its mother. 

I was bom in Antomir, in the Northwestern Region, 
Russia, in 1865. All I remember of my father is his tawny 
beard, a huge yellow apple he once gave me at the gate 
of an orchard where he was employed as watchman, and 
the candle which burned at his head as his body lay under 
a white shroud on the floor. I was less than three years 
old when he died, so my mother would carry me to the 
S3magogue in her arms to have somebody say the Prayer for 
the Dead with me. I was unable fully to realize the : 
meaning of the ceremony, of course, but its solemnity and 
pathos were not altogether lost upon me. There is a 
streak of sadness in the blood of my race. Very likely it is 
of Oriental origin. If it is, it has been amply noiirished by 
many centuries of persecution. 

Left to her own resources, my mother strove to support 
herself and me by peddling pea mush or doing odds and 
ends of jobs. She had to stmggle hard for our scanty 
livelihood and her trials and loneliness came home to me 
at an early period. 

I was her all in all, though she never poured over me 
those torrents of senseless rhapsody which I heard other 
Jewish mothers shower over their children. The only 
words of endearment I often heard from her were, “My 
little bean,” and, “My comfort.” Sometimes, when she 
seemed to be crushed by the miseries of her life, she would 
call me, “My poor little orphan.” Otherwise it was, 
“Come here, my comfort,” “Are you hungry, my little 
bean?” or, “You are a silly little dear, my comfort.” 
These words of hers and the sonorous contralto in which 
they were uttered are ever alive in my heart, like the Flame 
Everlasting in a synagogue. 

“ Mamma, why do you never beat me like other mammas 
do?” I once asked her. 

She laughed, kissed me, and said, “Because God has 
punished you hard enough as it is, poor orphan mine.” 

I scarcely remembered my father, yet I missed him 
keenly. I was ever awake to the fact that other little boys 
had fathers and that I was a melancholy exception; that 
most married women had husbands, while my mother had 
to bear her burden unaided. In my dim childish way I 

4 


HOME AND SCHOOL 

knew that there was a great blank in our family nest, that 
it was a widow’s nest; and the feeling of it seemed to color 
all my other feelings. 

When I was a little older and would no longer sleep with 
I my mother, a rusty old coat of my deceased father’s served 
me as a quilt. At night, before falling asleep, I would 
pull it over my head, shut my eyes tight, and evoke a flow 
of fantastic shapes, bright, beautifully tinted, and in- 
cessantly changing form and color. While the play of 
these figures and hues was going on before me I would see 
all sorts of bizarre visions, which at times seemed to have 
something to do with my father’s spirit. 

“Is papa in heaven now? Is he through with hell?” 
I once inquired of my mother. 

Some things or ideas would assume queer forms in my 
mind. God, for example, appealed to me as a beardless 
man wearing a quilted silk cap; holiness was something 
burning, forbidding, something connected with fire while 
a day had the form of an oblong box. 

I was a great dreamer of day dreams. One of my 
pastimes was to imagine a host of tiny soldiers each the 
size of my little finger, “but alive and real.’’ These I 
would drill as I saw officers do their men in front of the 
barracks some distance from our home. Or else I would 
take to marching up and down the room with mother’s 
rolling-pin for a rifle, grunting, ferociously, in Russian: 
“Left one! Left one! Left one!’’ in the double capacity 
of a Russian soldier and of David fighting Goliath. 

Often, while bent upon her housework, my mother would 
hum some of the songs of the famous wedding bard, 
Eliakim Zunzer, who later emigrated to America. I dis- 
tinctly remember her singing his “There is a flower on the 
road, decaying in the dust. Passers-by treading upon it,’’ 
his “Stunmer and Winter,’’ and his “Rachael is bemoaning 
her children.’’ I vividly recall these brooding airs as she 
used to sing them, for I have inherited her musical memory 
and her passionate love for melody, though not her voice. 
I cannot sing myself, but some tunes give me thrills of 
pleasure, keen and terrible as the edge of a sword. Some 
haunt me like ghosts. But then this is a common trait 
among our people. 

She was a wiry little woman, my mother, with prominent 
5 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 


cheek-bones, a small, firm mouth, and dark eyes. Her hair 
was likewise dark, though I saw it but very seldom, for 
like all orthodox daughters of Israel she always had it care- 
fully covered by a kerchief, a nightcap, or — on Saturdays 
and holidays — by a wig. She was extremely rigorous about 
it. For instance, while she changed her kerchief for her 
nightcap she would cause me to look away. 

My great sport during my ninth and tenth years was to 
play buttons. These we would fillip around on some patch 
of unpaved ground with a little pit for a billiard pocket. 
My own pockets were usually full of these buttons. As the 
game was restricted to brass ones from the uniforms of 
soldiers, my mother had plenty to do to keep those pockets 
of mine in good repair. To develop skill for the sport I 
would spend hours in some secluded spot, secretly practising 
it by myself. Sometimes, as I was thus engaged, my 
mother would seek me out and bring me a hunk of rye 
bread. 

“Here,” she would say, gravely, handing me it. And 
I would accept it with preoccupied mien, take a deep bite, 
and go on filliping my buttons. 

I gambled passionately and was continually counting 
my treasme, or running around the big courtyard, jingling 
it self-consciously. But one day I suddenly wearied of it all 
and traded my entire hoard of buttons for a pocket-knife 
and some trinkets. 

“ Don’t you care for buttons any more?” mother inquired. 

“I can’t bear the sight of them,” I replied. 

She shrugged her shoulders smilingly, and called me 
“queer fellow.” 

Sometimes I would fall to kissing her passionately. Once, 
•after an outburst of this kind, I said: 

“Are people sorry for us, mamma?” 

“What do you mean?” 

“Because I have no papa and we have no money.” 

Antomir, which then boasted eighty thousand inhabi- 
tants, was a town in which a few thousand rubles was con- 
sidered wealth, and we were among the humblest and 
poorest in it. The bulk of the population lived on less than 
fifty copecks (twenty-five cents) a day, and that was 
difficult to earn. A hunk of rye bread and a bit of herring 
or cheese constituted a meal. A quarter of a copeck (an 

6 


HOME AND SCHOOL 


eighth of a cent) was a coin with which one purchased a few 
. crumbs of pot-cheese or some boiled water for tea. Rub- 
bers were worn by people “of means” only. I never saw 
any in the district in which my mother and I had ottr home. 
A white starched collar was an attribute of “aristocracy.” 
Children had to nag their mothers for a piece of bread. 

“ Mamma, I want a piece of bread,” with a mild whimper. 

‘ ‘ Again bread ! Y ou’ll eat my head off. May the worms 
eat you.” 

Dialogues such as this were heard at every turn. 

My boyhood recollections include the following episode: 
Mother once sent me to a tinker’s shop to have otir drink- 
ing-cup repaired. It was a plain tin affair and must have 
cost, when new, something like four or five cents. It had 
done service as long as I. could remember. It was quite 
rusty, and finally sprang a leak. And so I took it to the 
tinker, or tinsmith, who soldered it up. On my way home 
I slipped and fell, whereupon the cup hit a cobblestone and 
sprang a new leak. When my mother discovered the 
damage she made me tell the story of the accident over 
and over again, wringing her hands and sighing as she 
listened. The average mother in our town would have 
given me a whipping in the circumstances. She did not. 


CHAPTER II 


E lived in a deep basement, in a large, dusky room 
that we shared with three other families, each fam- 



ily occupying one of the comers and as much space as 
it was able to wrest. Violent quarrels were a common- 
place occurrence, and the question of floor space a staple 
bone of contention. The huge brick oven in which the four 
housewives cooked dinner was another prolific source of 
strife. Fights over pots were as frequent and as tmculent 
as those over the children. 

Of our room-mates I best recall a bookbinder and a re- 
tired old soldier who mended old sheepskin coats for a 
living. My memories of home are inseparable from the 
odors of sheepskin and paste and the image of two upright 
wooden screws (the bookbinder's “machine"). The sol- 
dier had finished his term of military service years before, 
yet he still wore his uniform — a dilapidated black coat with 
new brass buttons, and a similar overcoat of a coarse gray 
material. Also, he still shaved his chin, sporting a pair 
of formidable gray side-whiskers. Shaving is one of the 
worst sins known to our faith, but, somehow, people^ over- 
looked it in one who had once been compelled to practise 
it in the army. Otherwise the furrier or sheepskin tailor 
was an extremely pious man. He was very kind to me, so 
that his military whiskers never awed me. Not so his lame, 
tall wife, who often hit me with one of her crutches. She 
was the bane of my life. The bookbinder’s wife was much 
younger than her husband and one of the things I often 
heard was that he was “crazy for her because she is his 
second wife,” from which I inferred that second wives 
were loved far more than first ones. 

The bookbinder had a red-haired little girl whom I hated 
like poison. Red Esther we called her, to distinguish her 
from a Black Esther, whose home was on the same yard. 


8 


HOME AND SCHOOL 

She was full of fight. Knowing how repulsive she was to- 
me, she was often the first to open hostilities, mocking my 
way of speaking, or sticking out her tongue at me. Or 
else she would press her freckled cheek against my lips: 
and then dodge back, shouting, gloatingly: 

“He has kissed a girl! He has kissed a girl! Sinner! 
Shame ! Sinner ! Sinner ! ’ ’ 

There were some other things that she or some of the 
other little girls of our courtyard would do to make an 
involuntary “sinner” of me, but these had better be left 
out. 

1 had many a fierce duel with her. I was considered a 
strong boy, but she was quick and nimble as a cat, and I 
usually got the worst of the bargain, often being left badly 
scratched and bleeding. At which point the combat 
would be taken up by our mothers. 

The room, part of which was our home, and two other 
single-room apartments, similarly tenanted, opened into a 
pitch-dark vestibule which my fancy peopled with “evil 
ones.” A steep stairway led up to the yard, part of which 
was occupied by a huddle of ramshackle one-story houses. 
It was known as Abner’s Court. During the summer 
months it swarmed with tattered, unkempt humanity. 
There was a peculiar odor to the place which I can still 
smell. (Indeed, many of the things that I conjure up 
from the past appeal as much to my sense of smell as to 
my visual memory.) It was anything but a grateful odor. 

The far end of our street was part of a squalid little 
suburb known as the Sands. It was inhabited by Gentiles 
exclusively. Sometimes, when a Jew chanced to visit it 
some of its boys would descend upon him with shouts of 
“Damned Jew!” “ Christ-killer !” and sicl^ their dogs at 
him. As we had no dogs to defend us, orthodox Jews being 
prohibited from keeping these domestic animals by a cus- 
tom amounting to a religious injunction, our boys never 
ventured into the place except, perhaps, in a spirit of dare- 
devil bravado. 

One day the bigger Jewish boys of our street had a 
pitched battle with the Sands boys, an event which is one 
of the landmarks in the history of my childhood. 

Still, some of the Sands boys were on terms of friendship 
with us and would even come to play with us in our yard. 

2 9 


THE RTSE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 

The 'Only Gentile family that lived in Abner’s Court was 
that of the porter. His children spoke fairly good Yiddish. 

One Saturday afternoon a pock-marked lad from the 
Sands, the son of a chimney-sweep, meeting me in the street, 
set his dog at me. As a result I came home with a fair- 
sized piece of my 'trousers (knee-breeches were unknown to 
xis) missing. 

“ I’m going to kill him,” my mother said, with something 
like a sob. “I’m just going to kill him.” 

“Cool down,'”’ the retired soldier pleaded, without re- 
moving his short-stemmed pipe from his mouth. 

Mother was silent for a minute, and even seated herself, 
but presently she sprang to her feet again and made for 
the door. 

The soldier’s wife seized her by an arm. 

‘ ‘ Where are you going ? To the Sands ? Are you crazy ? 
If you start a quarrel over there you’ll never come back 
alive.” 

“I don’t care!” 

She wrenched herself free and left the room. 

Half an hour later she came back beaming. 

‘‘His father is a lovely Gentile,” she said. “He went 
out, brought his murderer of a. boy home, took off his belt, 
and skinned him alive.” 

“A good Gentile,” the soldier’s wife commented, ad- 
miringly. 

There was always a pile of logs somewhere in our Court, 
the property of some family that was to have it cut up 
for firewood. This was oitr great gathering-place of a 
summer evening. Here we would bandy stories (often of 
our own inventing) or discuss things, the leading topic of 
conversation being the soldiers of the two regiments that 
were stationed in our town. We saw a good deal of these 
soldiers, and we could tell their ofiicers, commissioned 
or non-commissioned, by the number of stars or bands on 
their shoulder-straps. Also, we knew the names of their 
generals, colonels, and some of their majors or captains. 
The more important manoeuvers took place a great dis- 
tance from Abner’s Court, but that did not matter. If 
they occiured on a Saturday, when we were free from 
school and, as good luck would have it, they usually 
did— many of us, myself invariably included, would go to 

lO 


HOME AND SCHOOL 

see them. The blare of tnimpets, the beat of drums, the* 
playing of the band, the rhythmic clatter of thousands of 
feet, the glint or rows and rows of bayonets, the red or 
the blue of the uniforms, the commanding officer on his 
mount, the spirited singing of the men marching back to 
barracks — all this would literally hold me spellbound. 

That we often played soldiers goes without saying, but 
we played “hares” more often, a game in which the count- 
ing was done by means of senseless words like the American 
“Eeny, meeny, miny, moe.” Sometimes we would play 
war, with the names of the belligerents borrowed from the 
Old Testament, and once in a while we would have a real 
“war” with the boys of the next street. 

I was accounted one of the strong fellows among the boys 
of Abner’s Court as well as one of the conspicuous figures 
among them. Compactly built, broad-shotildered, with a 
small, firm mouth like my mother’s, a well-formed nose and 
large, dark eyes, I was not a homely boy by any means, 
nor one devoid of a certain kind of magnetism. 

One of my recollections is of my mother administering a 
tongue-lashing to a married young woman whom she had 
discovered flirting in the dark vestibule with a man not her 
husband. 

A few minutes later the young woman came in and begged 
my mother not to tell her husband. 

“ If I was your husband I would skin you alive.” 

“ Oh, don’t tell him ! Take pity! Don’t.” 

“I won’t. Get out of here, you liimp of stench.” 

“Oh, swear that you won’t tell him! Do swear, dearie. 
Long life to you. Health to every little bone of yours.” 

“ First you swear that you’ll never do it again, you heap of 
dimg.” 

“ Strike me blind and dumb and deaf if I ever do it again. 
There.” 

“ Your oaths are worth no more than the barking of a dog. 
Can’t you be decent? You ought to be knouted in the 
market-place. You are a plague. Black luck upon you. 
Get away from me.” 

“But I will be decent. May I break both my legs and 
both my arms if I am not. Do swear that you won’t tell 
him.” 

My mother 3delded. 


II 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 

She was passionately devout, my mother. Being abso- 
lutely illiterate, she would murmur meaningless words, in 
the singsong of a prayer, pretending to herself that she was 
performing her devotions. This, however, she would do 
with absolute earnestness and fervor, often with tears of 
ecstasy coming to her eyes. To be sure, she knew how to 
bless the Sabbath candles and to recite the two or three 
other brief prayers that our religion exacts from married 
women. But she was not contented with it, and the sight 
of a woman going to synagogue with a huge prayer-book 
under her arm was ever a source of envy to her. 

Most of the tenants of the Court were good people, 
honest and pure, but there were exceptions. Of these my 
memory has retained the face of a man who was known as 
“Carrot Pudding" Moe, a red-headed, broad-shouldered 
“finger worker," a specialist in “short change," yard- 
stick frauds, and other varieties of market-place legerde- 
main. One woman, a cross between a beggar and a dealer 
in second-hand dresses, had four sons, all of whom were 
pickpockets, but she herself was said to be of spotless 
honesty. She never allowed them to enter Abner’s Court, 
though every time one of them was in prison she would 
visit him and bring him food. 

Nor were professional beggars barred from the Court as 
tenants. Indeed, one of our next-door neighbors was a 
regular recipient of alms at the hands of my mother. 
For, poor as she was, she seldom let a Friday pass without 
distributing a few half-groschen (an eighth of a cent) in 
charity. The amusing part of it was the fact that one of 
the beggars on her list was far .better off than she. 

“He’s old and lame, and no hypocrite like the rest of 
them," she would explain. 

She had a ferocious temper, but there were people 
(myself among them) with whom she was never irritated. 
The women of Abner’s Court were either her devoted fol- 
lowers or her bitter enemies. She was a leader in most 
of the feuds that often divided the whole Court into two 
warring camps, and in those exceptional cases when she 
happened to be neutral she was an ardent peacemaker. 
She wore a dark-blue kerchief, which was older than I, 
and almost invariably, when there was a crowd of women 
in the yard, that kerchief would loom in its center. 

12 


HOME AND SCHOOL 

Growing as I did in that crowded basement room which 
was the home of four families, it was inevitable that the 
secrets of sex should be revealed to me before I was able 
fully to appreciate their meaning. Then, too, the neighbor- 
hood was not of the purest in town. Located a short dis- 
tance from Abner’s Court, midway between it and the 
barracks, was a lane of ill repute, usually full of soldiers. 
If it had an official name I never heard it. It was generally 
referred to as “that street,” in a subdued voice that was 
suggestive either of shame and disgust or of waggish mirth. 
For a long time I was under the impression that “That” 
was simply the name of the street. One summer day — I 
must have been eight years old — I told my mother that I 
had peeked in one of the little yards of the mysterious lane, 
that I had seen half-naked women and soldiers there, 
and that one of the women had beckoned me in and given 
me some cake. 

“Why, you mustn’t do that, Davie!” she said, aghast. 
“ Don’t you ever go near that street again! Do you hear?” 

“Why?” 

“Because it is a bad street.” 

“Why is it bad?” 

“Keep still and don’t ask foolish questions.” 

I obeyed, with the result that the foolish questions kept 
rankling in my brain. 

On a subsequent occasion, when she was combing my 
dark hair fondly, I ventured once more: 

“Mamma, why mustn’t I come near that street?” 

“ Because it is a sin to do so, my comfort. Fie upon it !” 

This answer settled it. One did not ask why it was a sin 
to do this or not to do that. “You don’t demand explana- 
tions of the Master of the World,” as people were con- 
tinually saying around me. My curiosity was silenced. 
That street became repellent to me, something hideously 
wicked and sinister. 

Sometimes some of the excommunicated wonien would 
drop in at our yard. As a rule, my mother was bitterly op- 
posed to their visits and she often chased them out with 
maledictions and expressions of abhorrence; but there was 
one case in which she showed unusual tolerance and even 
assumed the part of father confessor to a woman of this 
kind. She would listen to her tale of woe, homesickness, 

13 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 

and repentance, including some of the most intimate de- 
tails of her loathsome life. She would even deliver her 
donations to the synagogue, thus helping her cheat the 
Biblical injunction which bars the gifts of fallen women 
from a house of God. 

My mother would bid me keep away during these confabs 
of theirs, but this only whetted my curiosity and I often 
overheard far more than I should. 

Fridays were half-holidays with us Jewish boys. One 
Friday afternoon a wedding was celebrated in our court- 
yard. The procession emerged from one of the rickety 
one-story houses, accompani^ by a band playing a solemn 
tune. When it reached the center of the vacant part of the 
yard it came to a halt and a canopy was stretched over the 
principal figures of the ceremony. Prayers and benedic- 
tions were chanted. The groom put the ring on the bride’s 
finger, '‘dedicating her to himself according to the laws of 
Moses and Israel”; more prayers were recited; the bride- 
groom and the bride received sips of wine; a plate was 
smashed, the sound being greeted by shouts of “Good 
luck! Good luck!” The band struck up a lively tune 
with a sad tang to it. 

The yard was crowded with people. It was the greatest 
sensation we children had ever enjoyed there. We re- 
mained out chattering of the event till the windows were 
aglitter with Sabbath lights. 

I was in a trance. The ceremony was a poem to me, 
something inexpressibly beautiful and sacred. 

Presently a boy, somewhat older than I, made a jest at 
the yotmg couple’s expense. What he said was a 
startling revelation to me. Certain things which I had 
known before suddenly appeared in a new light to me. 
I relished the discovery and I relished the deviltry of it. 
But the poem vanished. The beauty of the wedding I had 
just witnessed, and of weddings in general, seemed to be 
irretrievably desecrated. 

That boy’s name was Naphtali. He was a trim-looking 
fellow with curly brown hair, somewhat near-sighted. He 
was as poor as the average boy in the yard and as poorly 
dressed, but he was the tidiest of us. He would draw, with a 
piece of chalk, figures of horses and men which we admired. 
He knew things, good and bad, and from that Friday I 

14 


HOME AND SCHOOL 


often sought his company. Unlike ^ost of the other boys'^ 
he talked little, throwing out his remarks at long intervals^ 
which sharpened my sense of his wisdom. His father 
never let him attend the manoeuvers, yet he knew more 
about soldiers than any of the other boys, more even than 
I, though I had that retired soldier, the sheepskin man, to- 
explain things military to me. 

One Slimmer evening Naphtali and I sat on a pile of logs; 
in the yard, watching a boy who was “playing” on a toy 
fiddle of his own m^ng. I said: 

“ I wish I knew how to play on a real fiddle, don’t you?**’ 

Naphtali made no answer. After a little he said: 

“You must think it is the bow that does the playing^ 
don’t you?” 

“What else does it?” I asked, perplexed. 

“ It’s the fingers of the other hand, those that are jumping 
around.” 

“Is it?” 

I did not understand, but I was deeply impressed all the 
same. The question bothered me all that evening. Finally 
I submitted it to my mother: 

“ Mamma, Naphtali says when you play on a fiddle it is 
not the bow that makes the tune, but the fingers that are 
jumping around. Is it true?” 

She told me not to bother her with foolish questions,, buti 
the retired soldier, who had overheard my query, vol-- 
imteered to answer it. 

“Of course it is not the bow,” he said. 

“But if you did not work the bow the strings would 
not play, would they?” I urged. 

“You could play a tune by pinching them,” he answered., 
“But if you just kept passing the bow up and down there; 
would be no tune at all.” 

I plied him with further questions and he answered them 
all, patiently and fondly, illustrating his explanations 
with a thread for a violin string, my mother looking from 
him to me beamingly. 

When we were tliough she questioned him: “Do you 
think he understands it all?” 

“ He certainly does. He has a good head,” he answered, 
with a wink. And she flushed with happiness. 


CHAPTER III 


T he tuition fee at a school for religious instruction or 
cheder was from eight to ten rubles (five dollars) for 
a term of six months. My mother could not afford it. 
On the other hand, she would not hear of sending me to the 
free cheder of our town, because of its reputation for poor 
instruction. So she importuned and harassed two distant 
relatives of ours until they agreed to raise part of the 
sum between them. The payments were made with any- 
thing but promptness, the result being that I was often 
turned out of school. Mother, however, would lose no 
time in bringing me back. She would implore the school- 
master to take pity on the poor, helpless woman that she 
was, assuring him, with some weird oaths, that she would 
pay him every penny. If that failed she would burst 
into a flood of threats and imprecations, daring him to 
let a fatherless boy grow up in ignorance of the Word of 
God. This was followed by similar scenes at the houses of 
my cousins, until finally I was allowed to resume my 
studies, sometimes at the same cheder, sometimes at some 
other one. There were scores of such private schools in our 
town, and before I got through my elementary religious 
education I had become acquainted with a considerable 
number of them. 

Sometimes when a teacher or his wife tried to oust me, 
I would clutch at the table and struggle sullenly until they 
yielded. 

I may explain that instruction in these cheders was con- 
fined to the Hebrew Old Testament and rudiments of the 
Talmud, the exercises lasting practically all day and part 
of the evening. The class-room was at the same time the 
bedroom, living-room, and kitchen of the teacher’s family. 
His wife and children were always aroimd. These cheder 

i6 


HOME AND SCHOOL 


teachers were usually a haggard-looking lot with full 
beards and voices hoarse with incessant shouting. 

A special man generally came for an hour to teach the 
boys to write. As he was to be paid separately, I was not 
included. The feeling of envy, abasement, and self-pity 
with which I used to watch the other boys ply their quills 
is among the most painful memories of my childhood. 

During the penmanship lesson I was generally kept busy 
in other directions. The teacher’s wife would make me 
help her with her housework, go her errands, or mind the 
baby (in one instance I became so attached to the baby 
that when I was expelled I missed it keenly). 

I seized every opportunity to watch the boys write and 
would practise the art, with chalk, on my mother’s table 
or bed, on the door of oiu* basement room, on many a gate 
or fence. Sometimes a boy would let me write a line or 
two in his copy-book. Sometimes, too, I would come to 
school before the schoolmaster had returned from the 
morning service at the synagogue, and practise with pen 
and ink, following the copy of some of my classmates. 
One of my teachers once caught me in the act. He held 
me up as an ink- thief and forbade me come to school before 
the beginning of exercises. 

Otherwise my teachers scarcely ever complained of my 
behavior. As to the progress I was making in my studies, 
they admitted, some even with enthusiasm, that mine was 
a “good head.” Nevertheless, to be beaten by them was 
an every-day experience with me. 

Overworked, underfed, and goaded by the tongue- 
lashings of their wives, these enervated drudges were 
usually out of sorts. Bursts of ill temper, in the form of 
invective, hair-pulling, ear-pulling, pinching, caning, “nape- 
cracking,” or “chin-smashing,” were part of the routine, 
and very often I was the scapegoat for the sins of other 
boys. When a pupil deserved punishment and the school- 
master could not afford to inflict it because the culprit 
happened to be the pet of a well-to-do family, the teacher’s 
anger was almost sure to be vented on me. If I happened 
to be somewhat absent-minded (the only offense I was ever 
guilty of), or was not quick enough to turn over a leaf, 
or there was the slightest halt in my singsong, I received 
a violent “nudge” or a pull by the ear. 

17 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 

“Lively, lively, carcass you!” I can alrnost hear one 
of my teachers shout these words as he digs his elbow 
into my side. “The millions one gets from your mother!” 

This man would beat and abuse me even by way of 
expressing approval. 

“A bright fellow, curse him!” he would say, pimching 
me with an air of admiration. Or, “Where did you get 
those brains of yours, you wild beast?” with a violent pull 
at my forelock. 

Dtiring the winter months, when the exercises went on 
until 9 in the evening, the candle or kerosene was paid 
for by the boys, in rotation. When it was my turn to 
furnish the light it often happened that my mother was 
unable to procure the requir^ two copecks (one cent). 
Then the teacher or his wife, or both, would curse me for a 
sponge and a robber, and ask me why I did not go to the 
charity school. 

Almost every teacher in town was known among us 
boys by some nickname, which was usually borrowed from 
some trade. If he had a predilection for pulling a boy’s 
hair we would call him “wig-maker” or “brush-maker”; 
if he preferred to slap or “calcimine” the culprit’s face 
we would speak of him as a mason. A “coachman” was 
a teacher who did not spare the rod or the whip; a 
“carpenter,” one who used his finger as a gimlet, boring 
a pupil’s side or cheek; a “locksmith,” one who had 
a weakness for “turning the screw,” or pinching. 

The greatest “locksmith” in town was a man named 
Shmerl. But then he was more often called simply Shmerl 
the Fincher. He was one of my schoolmasters. He 
seemed to prefer the flesh of plump, well-fed boys, but as 
these were usually the sons of prosperous parents, he often 
had to forego the pleasure and to Ratify his appetite on 
me. There was something morbid in his cruel passion for 
young flesh; something perversely related to sex, perhaps. 
He was a young man with a wide, sneering mouth. 

He would pinch me black and blue till my heart con- 
tracted with pain. Yet I never uttered a murmur. I was 
too profoimdly aware of the fact that I was kept on suf- 
ferance to risk the slightest demonstration. I had de- 
veloped a singular faculty for bearing pain, which I would 
parade before the other boys. Also, I had developed a 

i8 


HOME AND SCHOOL 

relish for flaunting my martyrdom, for being an object of 

pity. 

Oh, how I did hate this man, especially his sneering 
mouth ! In my helplessness I would seek comfort in dreams 
of becoming a great man some day, rich and mighty, and 
avenging myself on him. Behold! Shmerl the Fincher 
is running after me, cringingly begging my pardon, and I, 
omnipotent and formidable, say to him : ‘ ‘ Do you remember 
how you pinched the life out of me for nothing? Away 
with you, you cruel beast!” 

Or I would vision myself dropping dead imder one of his 
onslaughts. Behold him trembling with fright, the heart- 
less wretch! Serves him right. 

If my body happened to bear some mark of his cruelty 
I would conceal it carefully from my mother, lest she should 
quarrel with him. Moreover, to betray school secrets was 
considered a great “sin.” 

One night, as I was changing my shirt, anxiously ma- 
noeuvering to keep a certain spot on my left arm out of her 
sight, she became suspicious. 

“Hold on. What are you hiding there?” she said, step- 
ping up and inspecting my bare arm. She found an ugly 
blotch. “Woe is me! A lamentation upon me!” she 
said, looking aghast. “Who has been pinching you?” 

“Nobody.” 

“It is that beast of a teacher, isn’t it?” 

“No.” 

“Don’t lie, Davie. It is that assassin, the cholera take 
him! Tell me the truth. Don’t be afraid.” 

“A boy did it.” 

“What is his name?” 

“ I don’t know. It was a boy in the street.” 

“You are a liar.” 

The next morning when I went to cheder she accom- 
panied me. 

Arrived there, she stripped me half-naked and, pointing 
at the discoloration on my arm, she said, with ominous 
composure : 

‘ ‘ Look ! Whose work is it ? ” 

“Mine,” Shmerl answered, without removing his long- 
stemmed pipe from his wide mouth. He was no coward. 

“And you are proud of it, are you?” 

19 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 


“If you don’t like it you can take your ornament of a 
son along with you. Clear out, you witch!” 

She flew at him and they clenched. When they had 
separated, some of his hair was in her hand, while her arms, 
as she subsequently owned to me, were marked with the 
work of his expert Angers. 

Another schoolmaster had a special predilection for 
digging the huge nail of his thumb into the side of his 
victim, a peculiarity for which he had been named “the 
Cossack,” his famous thumb being referred to by the boys 
as his spear. He had a passion for inventing new and 
complex modes of pimishment, his spear figuring in most 
of them. One of his methods of inflicting pain was to slap 
the boy’s face with one hand and to prod his side with 
the thumb of the other, the slaps and the thrusts alternat- 
ing rhythmically. This heartless wretch was an abject 
coward. He was afraid of thunder, of rats, spiders, dogs, 
and, above all, of his wife, who would call him indecent 
names in oiu* presence. I abhorred him, yet when he was 
thus humiliated I felt pity for him. 

His wife kept a stand on a neighboring street comer, 
where she ^ sold cheap cakes and candy, and those of her 
husband’s pupils who were on her list of “good customers” 
were sure of immunity from his spear. As I scarcely ever 
had a penny, he could safely beat me whenever he was so 
disposed. 


CHAPTER IV 


T he Cossack had a large family and one of his daugh- 
ters, a httle girl, named Sarah-Leah, was the heroine 
of my first romance. 

Sarah-Leah had the misfortune to bear a striking re- 
semblance to a sister of her father’s, an offense which her 
mother never forgave her. She treated her as she might 
a stepdaughter. As for the Cossack, he may have cared for 
the child, but if he did he dared not show it. Poor little 
Sarah-Leah! She was the outcast of the family just as 
I was the outcast of her father’s school. 

She was about eleven years old and I was somewhat 
younger. The similarity of our fates and of our self-pity 
drew us to each other. When her father beat me I was 
conscious of her commiserating look, and when she was 
mistreated by her mother she would cast appealing glances 
in my direction. Once when the teacher punished me with 
special cruelty her face twitched and she broke into a 
whimper, whereupon he gave her a kick, saying: 

“ Is it any business of yours? Thank God your own skin 
has not been peeled off.” 

Once during the lunch hour, when we were alone, 
Sarah-Leah and I, in a comer of the courtyard, she said: 
“You are so strong, Davie!, Nothing hurts you.” 
“Nothing at all. I could stand everything,” I bragged. 
“You could not, if I bit your finger.” 

“Go ahead!” I said, with bravado, holding out my hand. 
She dug her teeth into one of my fingers. It hurt so 
that I involuntarily ground my own teeth, but I smiled. 

“ Does it not hurt you, Davie?” she asked, with a look of 
admiration. 

“Not a bit. Go on, bite as hard as you can.” 

She did, the cmel thing, and like many an older heroine, 
she would not desist imtil she saw her lover’s blood. 

21 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 

“It still does not hurt, does it?” she asked, wiping away 
a red drop from her lips. 

I shook my head contemptuously. 

“When you are a man you will be strong as Samson the 
Strong.” 

I was the strongest boy in her father’s school. She 
knew that most of the other boys were afraid of me, but 
that did not seem to interest her. At least when I began 
to boast of it she returned to my ability “to stand punish- 
ment,” as the pugilists would put it. 

One day one of my schoolmates aroused her admiration 
by the way he “played” taps with his fist for a tnunpet. 
I tried to imitate him, but failed grievously. The other boy 
laughed and Sarah-I^ah joined him. That was my first 
taste of the bitter cup called jealousy. 

I went home a lovelorn boy. 

I took to practising “taps.” I was continually tnunpet- 
ing. I kept at it so st^fenuously that my mother had many 
a quarrel with oiu* room-mates because of it. 

My efforts went for nothing, however. My rival, and 
with him my lady love, continued to sneer at my per- 
formances. 

I had only one teacher who never beat me, or any of the 
other boys. Whatever anger we provoked in him would 
spend itself in threats, and even these he often turned 
to a joke, in a peculiar vein of his own. 

“If you don’t behave I’ll cut you to pieces,” he would 
say. “I’ll just cut you to tiny bits and put you into my 
pipe and you’ll go up in smoke.” Or, “I’ll give you such 
a thrashing that you won’t be able to sit down, stand up, 
or lie down. The only thing you’ll be able to do is to fly — 
to the devil.” 

This teacher used me as a living advertisement for his 
school. He would take me from house to house, flaunting 
my recitations and interpretations. Very often the passage 
which he thus made me read was a lesson I had studied 
under one of his predecessors, but I never gave him away. 

Every cheder had its king. As a rule, it was the richest 
boy in the school, but I was usually the power behind the 
throne. Once one of these potentates (it was at the school 
of that kindly man) mimicked my mother hugging her pot 
of pea mush.* 


22 


HOME AND SCHOOL 

“If you do it again Fll kill you,” I said. 

“If you lay a finger on me,” he retorted, “the teacher will 
kick you out. Your mother doesn’t pay him, anyhow.” 

I flew at him. His Majesty tearftdly begged for mercy. 
Since then he was under my thumb and never omitted to 
share his ring-shaped rolls or apples with me. 

Often when a boy ate something that was beyond my 
mother’s means — a cookie or a slice of buttered white 
bread — I would eye him enviously till he complained that I 
made him choke. Then I would go on eying him until he 
bribed me off with a piece of the tidbit. If staring alone 
proved futile I might try to bring him to terms by naming 
all sorts of loathsome objects. At this it frequently hap- 
pened that the prosperous boy threw away his coolae 
from sheer disgust, whereupon I would be mean enough 
to pick it up and to eat it in triumph, calling him some- 
thing equiv^ent to “Sissy.” 

The compliments that were paid my brains were ample 
compensation for my mother’s struggles. Sending me to 
work was out of the question. She was resolved to put me 
in a Talmudic seminary. I was the “crown of her head” 
and she was going to make a “fine Jew” of me. Nor was 
she a rare exception in this respect, for there were htmdreds 
of other poor families in our town who would starve them- 
selves to keep their sons studying the Word of God. 

Whenever one of the neighbors suggested that I be 
apprenticed to some artisan she would flare up. On one 
occasion a suggestion of this kind led to a violent quarrel. 

One afternoon when we happened to pass by a book- 
store she stopped me in front of the window and, pointing 
at some huge volumes of the Talmud, she said: 

“This is the trade I am going to have you learn, and let 
our enemies grow green with envy.” 


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BOOK II 

ENTER SATAN 




CHAPTER I 


T he Talmudic semm3xy , or yeshivah, in which my mother 
placed me was a celebrated old institution, attracting 
students from many provinces. Like most yeshivahs, it was 
sustained by donations, and instruction in it was free. 
Moreover, out-of-town students foimd shelter under its 
roof, sleeping on the benches or floors of the same rooms 
in which the lectures were delivered and studied during the 
day. Also, they were supplied with a pound of rye bread 
each for breakfast. As to the other meals, they were fur- 
nished by the various households of the orthodox com- 
munity. I imderstand that some school-teachers in certain 
villages of New England get their board on the rotation 
plan, dining each day in the week with another family. 
This is exactly the way a poor Talmud student gets his 
sustenance in Russia, the system being called “eating days.” 

One hour a day was devoted to penmanship and a sorry 
smattering of Russian, the cost of tuition and writing- 
materials being paid by a “modem” philanthropist. 

I was admitted to that seminary at the age of thirteen. 
As my home was in the city, I neither slept in the class- 
room nor ‘ ‘ ate days. ’ ’ 

The lectures lasted only two hours a day, but then 
there was plenty to do, studying them and reviewing previ- 
ous work. This I did in an old house of prayer where many 
other boys and men of all ages pursued similar occupations. 
It was known as the Preacher’s Synagogue, and was famed 
for the large number of noted scholars who had passed 
their young days reading Talmud in it. 

The Talmud is a voluminous work of about twenty 
ponderous tomes. To read these books, to drink deep of. 
their sacred wisdom, is accounted one of the greatest “good 
deeds” in the life of a Jew. It is, however, as much a 
source of intellectual interest as an act of piety. If it be 

27 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 

true that our people represent a high percentage of mental 
vigor, the distinction is probably due, in some me^ure, to 
the extremely important part which Talmud studies have 
played in the spiritual life of the race. 

A Talmudic education was until recent years practically 
the only kind of education a Jewish boy of old-fashioned 
parents received. I spent seven years at it, not coimting 
the several years of Talmud which I had had at the various 
cheders. 

What is the Talmud? 

The bulk of it is taken up with debates of ancient rabbis. 
It is primarily concerned with questions of conscience, 
religious duty, and human s)unpathy — ^in short, with the 
relations “ between man and God ” and those “between man 
and man.” But it practically contains a consideration of 
almost every topic under the sun, mostly with some verse 
of the Pentateuch for a pretext. All of which is analyzed 
and explained in the minutest and keenest fashion, dis- 
cussions on abstruse subjects being sometimes relieved by 
an anecdote or two, a bit of folklore, worldly wisdom, or 
small talk. Scattered through its numerous volumes are 
priceless gems of poetry, epigram, and story-telling. 

It is at once a fountain of religious inspiration and a 
“brain-sharpener.” “Can you fathom the sea? Neither 
can you fathom the depths of the Talmud,” as we would 
put it. We were sure that the highest mathematics 
taught in the Gentile universities were child’s play as 
compared to the Talmud. 

In the Preacher’s Synagogue, then, I spent seven years 
of my youthful life. For hours and hours together I would 
sit ^t a gaunt reading-desk, swaying to and fro over some 
huge volume, reading its ancient text and interpreting it 
in Yiddish. All this I did aloud, in the peculiar Talmud 
singsong, a trace of which still persists in my intonation 
even when I talk cloaks and bank accounts and in English. 

The Talmud was being read there, in a hundred varia- 
tions of the same singsong, literally every minute of the 
year, except the hours of prayer. There were plenty of 
men to do it during the day and the evening, and at least 
ten men (a sacred number) to keep the holy word echoing 
throughout the night. The majority of them were simply 
scholarly business men who would drop in to read the 

28 


ENTER SATAN 


sacred books for an hour or two, but there was a con- 
siderable number of such as made it the occupation of 
their life. These were supported either by the congrega- 
tion or by their own wives, who kept shops, stalls, inns, 
or peddled, while their husbands spent sixteen hoiirs a day 
studying Talmud. 

One of these was a man named Reb (Rabbi) Sender, 
an insignificant, ungainly little figure of a man, with a sad, 
child-like little face flanked by a pair of thick, heavy, 
dark-brown side-locks that seemed to weigh him down. 

His wife kept a trimming-store or something of the sort, 
and their only child, a girl older than I, helped her attend 
to business as well as to keep house in the single-room 
apartment which the family occupied in the rear of the 
little shop. As he invariably came to the synagogue for 
the morning prayer, and never left it until after the evening 
service, his breakfasts and dinners were brought to the 
house of worship. His wife usually came with the meal 
herself. Waiting on one’s husband and “giving him 
strength to learn the law” was a “good deed.” 

She was a large woman with an interesting dark face, 
and poor Reb Sender cut a sorry figiu-e by her side. 

Men of his class are described as having “no acquaintance 
with the face of a coin.” All the fnoney he usually handled 
was the penny or two which he needed to pay for his bath 
of a Friday afternoon. Occasionally he would earn three 
or four copecks by participating in some special prayer, 
for a sick person, for instance. These pennies ' he in- 
variably gave away. Once he gave his muffler to a poor 
boy. His wife subsequently nagged him to death for it. 
The next morning he complained of her to one of the 
other scholars. 

“Still,” he concluded, “if you want to serve God you 
must be ready to suffer for it. A good deed that comes 
easy to you is like a donation which does not cost you 
an3^hing.” 

I made his acquaintance by asking him to help me 
out with an obscure passage. This he did with such 
simple alacrity and kindly modesty as to make me feel a 
chum of his. I warmed to him and he reciprocated my 
feelings. He took me to his bosom. He often offered to 
go over my lesson with me, and I accepted his services 

29 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 

with gratitude. He spoke in a warm, mellow basso that 
had won my heart from the first. His singsong lent pecul- 
iar charm to the pages that we read in duet. As he read 
and interpreted the text he would wave his snuff-box, by 
way of punctuating and emphasizing his words, much as 
the conductor of an orchestra does his baton, now gently, 
insinuatingly, now with a passionate jerk, now with a 
sweeping majestic movement. One cannot read Talmud 
without gesticulating, and Reb Sender would scarcely have 
been able to gesticulate without his snuff-box. 

It was of tortoise shell, with a lozenge-shaped bit of silver 
in the center. It gradually became dear to me as part 
of his charming personality. Sometimes, when we were 
reading together, that glistening spot in the center of the 
lid would fascinate my eye so that I lost track of the subject 
in hand. 

He often hummed some liturgical melody of a well- 
known synago^e chanter. One afternoon he sang some- 
thing to me, with his snuff-box for a baton, and then asked 
me how I liked it. 

‘T composed it myself,” he explained, boastfully. 

I did not like the tune. In fact, I failed to make out any 
tune at all, but I was overflowing with a desire to please 
him, so I said, with feigned enthusiasm: 

“ Did you really? Why, it’s so beautiful, so sweet!” 

Reb Sender’s face shone. 

After that he often submitted his compositions to me, 
though he was too shy to sing them to older people. They 
were all supposed to be liturgical tunes, or at least some 
“hop” for the Day of the Rejoicing of the Law. When I 
hailed the newly composed air with warm approval he 
would show his satisfaction either with shamefaced re- 
serve or with child-like exuberance. If, on the other hand, 
I failed to conceal my indifference, he would grow morose, 
and it would be some time before I succeeded in coaxing 
him back to his usual good humor. 

Nor were his melodies the only things he confided to me. 
When I was still a mere boy, fourteen or fifteen years old, 
he would lay bare to me some of the most intimate secrets 
of his heart. 

“ You see, my wife thinks me a fool,” he once complained 
to me. “She thinks I don’t see it. Do you understand, 

30 


ENTER SATAN 

David? She looks up to me for my learning, but otherwise 
she thinks I have no sense. It hurts, you know.” 

He was absolutely incapable of keeping a secret or of 
saying or acting anything that did not come from the 
depths of his heart. He often talked to me of God and 
His throne, of the world to come, and of the eternal bliss 
of the righteous, quoting from a certain book of exhorta- 
tions and adding much from his own exalted imagination. 
And I would listen, thrilling, and make a silent vow to be 
good and to dedicate my life to the service of God. 

“Study the Word of God, Davie dear,” he would say, 
taking my hand into his. “There is no happiness like it. 
What is wealth? A dream of fools. What is this world?* 
A mere curl of smoke for the wind to scatter. Only the 
other world has substance and reality; only good deeds, 
and holy learning have tangible worth. Beware of Satan,. 
Davie. When he assails you, just say no ; turn your heart 
to steel and say no. Do you hear, my son?” 

The anecdotes and sayings of the Talmud, its ab- 
surdities no less than its gems of epigrammatic wisdom, 
were mines of poetry, philosophy, and science to him. 
He was a dreamer with a noble imagination, with a soul 
full of beauty. 

This unsophisticated, simple-hearted man, with the 
mind of an infant, was one of the most quick-witted, 
nimble-minded scholars in town. 

His great delight was to tackle some intricate maze of 
Talmudic reasoning. This he would do with ferocious, 
zest, like a warrior attacking the enemy, flashing his tortoise 
snuff-box as if it were his sword. When away from his 
books or when reading some of the fantastic tales in 
them he was meek and gentle as a little bird. No sooner 
did he come across a fine bit of reasoning than he would 
impress me as a lion. 

On one occasion, after Reb Sender got through a cel- 
ebrated tangle with me, arousing my admiration by the 
ingenuity with which he discovered discrepancies and by 
the adroitness with which he explained them away, he said : 

“I do enjoy reading with you. Sometimes, when I 
read by myself, I feel lonely. Anyhow, I love to have you 
around, David. If you went to study somewhere else I 
should miss you very much.” On another occasion he said : 

31 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKV 

“You are like a son to me, Davie. Be good, be genuinely 
pious; for my sake, if for nothing else. Above all, don’t 
be double-faced; never say what you do not mean; do 
not utter words of flattery.” 

As I now analyze my reminiscences of him I feel that 
he was a yearning, lonely man. He was in love with his 
wife and, in spite of her devotion to him, he was love- 
lorn. Poor Reb Sender! He was anything but a hand- 
some man, while she was well built and pretty. And so it 
may be that she showed more reverence for his learning 
and piety than love for his person. He was continually 
referring to her, apparently thirsting to discuss her de- 
meanor toward him. 

“The Lord of the Universe has been exceptionally good 
to me,” he once said to me. “ May I not forfeit His kind- 
ness for my sins. He gives me health and my daily bread, 
and I have a worthy woman for a wife. Indeed, she is a 
woman of rare merits, so clever, so efficient, and so good. 
She nags me but seldom, very seldom.” He paused to 
take snuff and then remained silent, apparently hesitating 
to come to the point. Finally he said: “In fact, she is so 
wise I sometimes wish I could read her thoughts. I should 
give anything to have a glimpse into her heart. She has 
so little to say to me. She thinks I am a fool. There is a 
sore in here” — pointing at his heart. “We have been 
married oypr twenty-two years, and yet — ^would you be- 
lieve it? — -I still feel shy in her presence, as if we were 
brought together for the first time, by a match-maker, 
don’t you know. But then you are too young to under- 
stand these things. Nor, indeed, ought I to talk to you 
about them^ for you are only a child. But I cannot help 
it. If I did not unburden my mind once in a while I 
might not be able to stand it.” 

That afternoon he composed what he called a “very 
sad tune,” and hummed it to me. I failed to make out the 
tune, but I could feel its sadness. 

I loved him passionately. As for the other men of the 
synagogue, if they did not share my ardent affection for 
him, they all, with one exception, liked him. The excep- 
tion was a middle-aged little Talmudist with a tough little 
beard who held everybody in terror by his violent temper 
and pugnacity. He was a pious man, but his piety never 

32 


ENTER SATAN 

manifested itself with such genuine fervor as when he ex- 
posed the impiety of others. He was forever picking quar- 
rels, forever challenging people to debate with him, forever 
offering to show that their interpretation of this passage or 
that was all wrong. The sound of his acrimonious voice or 
venomous laughter grated on Reb Sender’s nerves, but he 
bore him absolutely no ill-will. Nor did he ever utter a 
word of condemnation concerning a certain other scholar, 
an inveterate tale-bearer and gossip-monger, though a good- 
natured fellow, who not infrequently sought to embroil 
him with some of his warmest friends. 

One Talmudist, a corpulent old man whose seat was next 
to Reb Sender’s, was more inclined to chat than to study. 
Now and again he would break in upon my friend’s reading 
with some piece of gossip; and the piteous air with which 
Reb Sender would listen to him, casting yearning glances 
at his book as he did so, was as touching as it was amusing. 

My mother usually brought my dinner to the synagogue. 
She would make her entrance softly, so as to take me by 
surprise while I was absorbed in my studies. It did her 
heart good to see me read the holy book. As a result, I 
was never so diligent as I was at the horn: when I expected 
her arrival with the dinner-pot. Very often I discovered 
her tiptoeing in or standing at a distance and watching me 
admiringly. Then I would take to singing and swaying 
to and fro with great gusto. She often encountered Reb 
Sender’s wife at the synagogue. They did not take to 
each other. 

On one occasion my mother found Reb Sender’s daughter 
at the house of prayer. Having her father’s figure* and 
features, the girl was anything but prepossessing. My 
mother surveyed her from head to foot. 

That evening when I was eating my supper at home my 
mother said: 

“Look here, Davie. I want you to understand that 
Reb Sender’s wife is up to some scheme about you. She 
wants you to marry that monkey of hers. That’s what she 
is after.” 

I was not quite fifteen. 

“Leave me alone,” I retorted, coloring. 

“Never mind blushing. It is she who tells Reb Sender 
33 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 

to be so good to you. The foxy thing! She thinks I don't 
see through her. That scarecrow of a girl is old enough to 
be your mother, and she has not a penny to her marriage 
portion, either. A fine match for a boy like you! Why, 
you can get the best girl in town.” 

She said it aloud, by way of flaunting my future before 
our room-mates. Two of the three families who shared 
the room with us, by the way, were the same as when I was 
a little boy. Moving was a rare event in the life of the 
average Antomir family. 

Red. Esther was still there. She was one of those who 
heard my mother’s boastful warning to me. She grinned. 
After a little, as I was crossing the room, she sang out with 
a giggle; 

“Bridegroom!” 

“I’ll break your bones,” I returned, pausing. 

She stuck out her tongue at me. 

I still hated her, but, somehow, she did not seem to be 
the same as she had been before. The new lines that were 
developing in her growing little figure, and more particularly 
her own consciousness of them, were not lost upon me. A 
new element was stealing into my rancor for her — a feeling 
of forbidden curiosity. At night, when I lay in bed, 
before falling asleep, I would be alive to the fact that she 
was sleeping in the same room, only a few feet from me. 
Sometimes I would conjure up the days of our childhood 
when Red Esther caused me to “sin” against my will, 
whereupon I would try to imagine the same scenes, but 
with the present fifteen-year-old Esther in place of the 
five-year-old one of yore. 

The word “girl” had acquired a novel sound for me, one 
full of disquieting charm. The same was true of such 
words as ‘ ‘ sister, ” “ niece, ” or “ bride, ’ ’ but not of ‘ ‘ woman. ’ ’ 
Somehow sisters and nieces were all young girls, whereas 
a woman belonged to the realm of middle-aged humanity, 
not to my world. 

Naphtali went to the same seminary. He was two 
grades ahead of me. He “ate days,” for his father had 
died and his mother had married a man who refused to 
support him. He was my great chum at the seminary. 
The students called him Tidy Naphtali or simply the Tidy 

34 


ENTER SATAN 


One. He was a slender, trim lad, his curly brown hair and 
his near-sighted eyes emphasizing his Talmudic appearance. 
He was the cleanliest and neatest boy at the yeshivah. 
This often aroused sardonic witticism from some of the 
other students. Scrupulous tidiness was so uncommon a 
virtue among the poorer classes of Antomir that the pains- 
taking care he bestowed upon his person and everything 
with which he came in contact struck many of the boys as a 
manifestation of girl-like squeamishness. As for me, it 
only added to my admiration of him. His conscience 
seemed to be as clean as his finger-nails. He wrote a beau- 
tiful hand, he could draw and carve, and he was a good 
singer. His interpretations were as clear-cut as his hand- 
writing. He seemed to be a Jack of all trades and master of 
all. I admired and envied him. His reticence piqued me 
and intensified his power over me. I strove to emulate 
his cleanliness, his graceful Talmud gestures, and his hand- 
writing. At one period I spent many hours a day practising 
caligraphy with some of his lines for a model. 

“Oh, I shall never be able to write like you,” I once 
said to him, in despair. 

“Let us swap, then,” he replied, gaily. “Give me your 
mind for learning and I shall let you have my hand- 
writing.” 

“Pshaw! Yours is a better mind than mine, too.” 

“No, it is not,” he returned, and resumed his reading. 

“Besides, you are ahead of me in piety and conduct.” 

He shook his head deprecatingly and went on reading. 

He was one of the noted “men of diligence” at the 
seminary. With his near-sighted eyes close to the book 
he would read all day and far into the night in ringing, 
ardent singsongs that I thought fascinating. The other 
reticent Talmudists I knew usually read in an undertone, 
humming their recitatives quietly. He seldom did. Spar- 
ing as he was of his voice in conversation, he would use it 
extravagantly when intoning his Talmud. 

It is with a peculiar sense of duality one reads this 
ancient work. While your mind is absorbed in the meaning 
of the words you utter, the melody in which you utter 
them tells your heart a tale of its own. You live in two 
distinct worlds at once. Naphtali had little to say to other 
people, but he seemed to have much to say to himself. His 

35 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 


singsongs were full of meaning, of passion, of beauty. 
Quite often he would sing himself hoarse. 

Regularly every Thursday night he and I had our vigil 
at the Preacher’s Synagogue, where many other young men 
would gather for the same piupose. We would sit up 
reading, side by side, imtil the worshipers came to morn- 
ing service. To spend a whole night by his side was one of 
the joys of my existence in those days. 

Reb Sender was somewhat jealous of him. 

Soon after graduation Naphtali left Antomir for a town 
in which lived some of his relatives. I missed him as I 
would a sweetheart. 


CHAPTER II 


I WAS nearly sixteen. I had graduated from the semi- 
nary and was pursuing my studies at the Preacher’s 
Synagogue exclusively, as an “independent scholar.” I 
was overborne with a sense of my dignity and freedom. I 
seemed to have suddenly grown much taller. If I caught 
myself walking fast or indulging in some boyish prank I 
would check myself, saying in my heart: “You must not 
forget that you are an independent scholar. You are a boy 
no longer.” 

I was free to loaf, but I worked harder than ever. I was 
either in an exalted state of mind or pining away under a 
spell of yearning and melancholy — of causeless, meaningless 
melancholy. 

My Talmudic singsong reflected my moods. Sometimes 
it was a spirited recitative, ringing with cheery self-con- 
sciousness and the joy of being a lad of sixteen; at other 
times it was a solemn song, aglow with devotional ecstasy. 
When I happened to be dejected in the commonplace sense 
of the word, it was a listless murmiu-, doleful or sullen. 
But then the very reading of the Talmud was apt to dispel 
my gloom. My voice would gradually rise and ring out, 
vibrating with intellectual passion. 

The intonations of the other scholars, too, echoed the 
voices of their hearts, some of them sonorous with religious 
bliss, others sad, still others happy-go-lucky. Although 
absorbed in my book, I would have a vague consciousness of 
the connection between the various singsongs and their 
respective performers. I would be aware that the bass 
voice with the flourishes in front of me belonged to the 
stuttering widower from Vitebsk, that the squeaky, jerky 
intonation to the right came from the red-headed fellow 
whom I loathed for his thick lips, or that the sweet, un- 
assertive cadences that came floating from the east wall 

37 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 


were being uttered by Reb Rachmiel, the “man of acumen’* 
whose father-in-law had made a fortune as a war-contractor 
in the late conflict with Turkey. All these voices blended 
in a symphonic source of inspiration for me. It was divine 
music in more senses than one. 

The ancient rabbis of the Talmud, the Tanaim of the 
earlier period and the Amoraim of later generations, were 
living men. I could almost see them, each of them in- 
dividualized in my mind by some of his sayings, by his 
manner in debate, by some particular word he used, or by 
some particular incident in which he figured. I pictured 
their faces, their beards, their voices. Some of them had 
won a warmer comer in my heart than others, but they 
were all superior htunan beings, godly, unearthly, denizens 
of a world that had been ages ago and would come back 
in the remote future when Messiah should make his 
appearance. 

Added to the mystery of that world was the mystery 
of my own singsong. Who is there? — I seemed to be 
wondering, my time or recitative sounding like the voice 
of some other fellow. It was as if somebody were hidden 
within me. What did he look like? 

If you study the Talmud you please God even more than 
you do by praying or fasting. As you sit reading the great 
folio He looks down from heaven upon you. Sometimes 
I seemed to feel His gaze shining down upon me, as though 
casting a halo over my head. 

My relations with God were of a personal and of a rather 
familiar character. He was interested in everything I did 
or said; He watched my every move or thought; He was 
always in heaven, yet, somehow, he was always near me, 
and I often spoke to Him as I might to Reb Sender. 

If I caught myself slurring over some of my prayers or 
speaking ill of another boy or telling a falsehood, I would 
say to Him, audibly: 

“Oh, forgive me once more. You know that I want to 
be good. I will be good. I know I will.” 

Sometimes I would continue to plead in this manner till 
I broke into sobs. At other times, as I read my Talmud, 
conscious of His approval of me, tears of bliss would come 
into my eyes. 

I loved Him as one does a woman. 

38 


ENTER SATAN 

Often while saying my prayers I would fall into a veritable 
delirium of religious infatuation. Sometimes this fit of 
happiness and yearning would seize me as I walked in the 
street. 

“O Master of the World! Master of the Universe! 
I love you so!” I would sigh. “Oh, how I love you!” 

I also had talks with the Evil Spirit, or Satan. He, too, 
was always near me. But he was always trying to get me 
into trouble. 

“You won’t catch me again, scoundrel you,” I would 
assure him with sneers and jeers. Or, “Get away from 
me, heartless mischief-maker you! You’re wasting your 
time, I can tell you that.” 

My bursts of piety usually lasted a week or two. Then 
there was apt to set in a period of apathy, which was sure 
to be replaced by days of penance and a new access of 
spiritual fervor. 

One day, as Reb Sender and I were reading a page 
together, a very pretty girl entered the synagogue. She 
came to have a letter written for her by one of the scholars. 
I continued to read aloud, but I did so absently now, 
trailing along after my companion. My mind was upon 
the girl, and I was casting furtive glances. 

Reb Sender paused, with evident annoyance. “What 
are you looking at, David?” he said, with a tug at my 
arm. “Shame! You are 5delding to Satan.” 

I colored. 

He was too deeply interested in the Talmudic argument 
under consideration to say more on the matter at this 
minute, but he returned to it as soon as we had reached 
the end of the section. He spoke earnestly, with fatherly 
concern: 

“You are growing, David. You are a boy no longer. 
You are getting to be a man. This is just the time when 
one should be on his guard against Satan.” 

I sat, looking down, my brain in a daze of embarrass- 
ment. 

“Remember, David, ‘He who looks even at the little 
finger of a woman is as guilty as though he looked at a woman 
that is wholly naked.’” He quoted the Talmudic maxim 
in a tone of passionate sternness, beating the desk with his 
.snuff-box at each word. 


39 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 

As to his own conduct, he was one of three or four men 
at the synagogue of whom it was said that they never looked 
at women, and, to a very considerable extent, his reputa- 
tion was not imjustified. 

“You must never tire fighting Satan, David,” he pro- 
ceeded. “Fight him with might and main.” 

As I listened I was tingling with a mute vow to be good. 
Yet, at the same time, the vision of “a woman that is 
wholly naked” was vividly before me. 

He caused me to bring a certain ancient work, one not 
included in the Talmud, in which he made me read the 
following : 

“Rabbi Mathia, the son of Chovosh, had never set eyes on a 
woman. Therefore when he was at the synagogue studying the 
Law, his visage would shine as the sim and its features would 
be the features of an angel. One day, as he thus sat reading, 
Satan chanced to pass by, and in a fit of jealousy Satan said: 

“‘Can it really be that this man has never sinned?’ 

“‘He is a man of spotless purity,’ answered God. 

“‘Just grant me the liberty,’ Satan luged, ‘and I will lead 
him to sin.’ 

“ ‘ You will never succeed.’ 

“ ‘ Let me try.’ 

“ ‘Proceed.’ 

“ Satan then appeared in the guise of the most beautiful woman 
in the world, of one the like of whom had not been bom since 
the days of Naomi, the sister of Tuval Cain, the woman who had 
led angels astray. When Rabbi Mathia espied her he faced 
about. So Satan, still in the disguise of a beautiful woman, 
took up a position on the left side of him; and when he turned 
away once more he walked over to the right side again. Finally 
Rabbi Mathia had nails and fire brought him and gouged out his 
own eyes. 

“At this God called for Angel Raphael and bade him cure the 
righteous man. Presently Raphael came back with the report 
that Rabbi Mathia would not be cmed lest he should again be 
tempted to look at pretty women. 

“ ‘ Go tell him in My name that he shall never be tempted again,’ 
said God. 

“And so the holy man regained his eyesight and was never 
molested by Satan again.” 

The painful image of poor Rabbi Mathia gouging out 
his eyes supplanted the nude figure of the previous quota- 
tion in my mind. 


40 


ENTER SATAN 

Reb Sender pursued his “exhortative talk.” He dwelt 
on the duties of man to man. 

“If a man^ is tongue-tied, don’t laugh at him, but, 
rather, feel pity for him, as you would for a man with 
broken legs. Nor should you hate a man who has a 
weakness for telling falsehoods. This, too, is an afflic- 
tion, like stuttering or being lame. Say to yourself, 
‘Poor fellow, he is given to lying.’ Above all, you must 
fight conceit, envy, and every kind of ill-feeling in your 
heart. Remember, the sum and substance of all learn- 
ing lies in^ the words, ‘Love thy neighbor as thyself.’ 
Another thing, remember that it is not enough to abstain 
from lying by word of mouth; for the worst lies are often 
conveyed by a false look, smile, or act. Be genuinely 
truthful, then. And if you feel that you are good, don’t 
be too proud of it. Be modest, humble, simple. Control 
your anger.” 

He worked me up to a veritable frenzy of penitence. 

“I will, I will,” I said, tremulously. “And if I ever 
catch myself looking at a woman again I will gouge out 
my eyes like Rabbi Mathia.” 

“’S-sh! Don’t say that, my son.” 

About a quarter of an hour later, as I sat reading by 
myself, I suddenly sprang to my feet and walked over to 
Reb Sender. 

“You are so dear to me,” I gasped out. “You are a 
man of perfect righteousness. I love you so. I should 
jump into fire or into water for your sake.” 

“’S-sh!” he said, taking me gently by the hand and 
pressing me down into a seat by his side. “You are a good 
boy. As to my being a man of perfect righteousness, alas! 
I am far from being one. We are all sinful. Come, let us 
read another page together.” 

Satan kept me rather busy these days. It was not an 
easy task to keep one’s eyes off the girls who came to the 
Preacher’s Synagogue, and when none was around I would 
be apt to think of one. I would even picture myself 
touching a feminine cheek with the tip of my finger. Then 
my heart would sink in despair and I would hurl curses at 
Satan. 

“Eighty black years on you, vile wretch you!” I would 
4 41 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 

whisper, gnashing my teeth, and fall to reading with 
ferocious zeal. 

In the relations between men and women it is largely 
a case of forbidden fruit and the mystery of distance. 
The great barrier that religion, law, and convention have 
placed between the sexes adds to the joys and poetry of 
love, but it is responsible also for much of the suffering, 
degradation, and crime that spring from it. In my case 
this barrier was of special magnitude. Dancing with a 
girl, or even taking one out for a walk, was out of the ques- 
tion. Nor was the injunction confined to men who de- 
voted themselves to the study of holy books. It was the 
rule of ordinary decency for any Jew except one who lived 
'Tike a Gentile,” that is, like a person of modem culture. 
Indeed, there were scores of towns in the vicinity of Antomir 
where one could not take a walk even with one’s own wife 
without incurring universal condemnation. There was a 
dancing-school or two in Antomir, but they were attended 
by young mechanics of the coarser type. To be sure, there 
were plenty of young Jews in our town who did live ‘Tike 
Gentiles,” who called the girls of their acquaintance “young 
ladies,” took off their hats to them, took them out for a 
walk in the public park, and danced with them, just like 
the nobles or the army officers of my birthplace. But then 
these fellows spoke Russian instead of Yiddish and alto- 
gether they belonged to a world far removed from mine. 
Many of these “modem” young Jews went to high school 
and wore pretty uniforms with silver-plated buttons and 
silver lace. To me they were apostates, sinners in Israel. 
And yet I could not think of them without a lurking feeling 
of envy. The Gentile books they studied and their social 
relations with girls who were dressed “like young noble- 
women” piqued my keenest curiosity and made me feel 
small and wretched. 

The orthodox Jewish faith practically excludes woman 
from religious life. Attending divine service is not obliga- 
tory for her, and those of the sex who wish to do so are 
allowed to follow the devotions not in the synagogue proper, 
but through little windows or peepholes in the wall of an 
adjoining room. In the eye of the spiritual law that gov- 
erned my life women were intended for two purposes only : 
for the continuation of the human species and to serve as 

42 


ENTER SATAN 

an instrument in the hands of Satan for tempting the 
stronger sex to sin. Marriage was simply a duty imposed 
by the Bible. Love? So far as it meant attraction be- 
tween two persons of the opposite sex who were not man 
and wife, there was no such word in my native tongue. 
One loved one’s wife, mother, daughter, or sister. To be 
“in love” with a girl who was an utter stranger to you was 
something unseemly, something which only Gentiles or 
“modem” Jews might indulge in. 

But at present all this merely deepened the bewitching 
mystery of the forbidden sex in my young blood. And 
Satan, wide awake and sharp-eyed as ever, was not slow 
to perceive the change that had come over me and made 
the most of it. 

There was no such thing as athletics or outdoor sports 
in my world. The only ph5rsical exercise known to us 
was to be swinging like a pendulum in front of your reading- 
desk from nine in the morning to bedtime every day, and 
an all-night vigil every Thursday in addition. Even a 
most innocent frolic among the boys was suppressed as an 
offense to good Judaism. 

All of which tended to deepen the mystery of girlhood and 
to increase the chances of Satan. 

I must explain that although women could not attend 
divine service except through a peephole, they were free to 
visit the house of worship on all sorts of other errands. So 
some of them would come with food for the scholars, 
others with candles for the chandeliers, while still others 
wanted letters read or written. One of the several rabbis 
of the town was in the habit of spending his evenings reading 
Talmud in the Preacher’s Synagogue, so housewives of the 
neighborhood, or their daughters, would bring some spoon, 
pot, or chicken to have them passed upon according to the 
dietary laws of Moses and the Talmud. 

I would scrutinize the faces and figures of these girls, 
I would draw comparisons, make guesses as to whether 
they were engaged to be married (I did not have to speculate 
upon whether they were already married, because a young 
matron who would visit our synagogue was sure to have her 
hair covered with a wig). It became one of my pastimes 
to make forecasts as to the looks of the next young woman 
to call at the s5magogue, whether she would be pretty or 

43 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 


homely, tall or short, fair or dark, plump or spare. I was 
interested in their eyes, but, somehow, I was still more 
interested in their mouths. Some mouths would set my 
blood on fire. I would invent all sorts of romantic episodes 
with myself as the hero. I would portray my engagement 
to some of the pretty girls I had seen, our wedding, and, 
above all, our married life. The worst of it was that these 
images often visited my brain while I was reading the holy 
book. Satan would choose such moments of all others be- 
cause in this manner he would involve me in two great sins 
at once; for in addition to the wickedness of indulging in 
salacious thoughts there was the offense of desecrating the 
holy book by them. 

Reb Sender’s daughter was about to be married to a 
tradesman of Talmudic education. I did not care for her 
in the least, yet her approaching wedding aroused a lively 
interest in me. 

Red Esther had gone out to service. She came home but 
seldom, and when she did we scarcely ever talked to each 
other. The coarse brightness of her complexion and the 
harsh femininity of her laughter repelled me. 

“I do hate her,” I once said to myself, as I heard that 
laugh of hers. 

“And yet you would not mind kissing her, would you, 
now?” a voice retorted. 

I had to own that I would not, and then I cudgeled my 
brains over the amazing discrepancy of the thing. Kissing 
meant being fond of one. I enjoyed kissing my mother, 
for instance. Now, I certainly was not fond of Esther. 
I was sure that I hated her. Why, then, was I impelled 
to kiss her? How could I hate and be fond of her at once? 
I went on reasoning it out, Talmud fashion, till I arrived 
at the conclusion that there were two kinds of kisses: 
the kiss of affection and the kiss of Satan. I submitted it, 
as a discovery, to some of the other young Talmudists, but 
they scouted it as a truism. A majority of us were modest, 
of speech and conduct. But there were some who were not. 


CHAPTER III 


W HEN I was a little over eighteen the number of 
steady readers at the Old Synagogue was increased 
by the advent of a youth from the Polish provinces. His 
appearance produced something of a sensation, for, in ad- 
dition to being the son of a rich merchant and the pros- 
pective son-in-law of a celebrated rabbi, he was the pos- 
sessor of a truly phenomenal memory. He was well versed 
in the entire Talmud, and could recite by heart about five 
hundred leaves, or one thousand pages, of it. He was 
generally called the Pole. He was tall and supple, fair- 
complexioned, and well-groomed, with a suggestion of self- 
satisfaction and aloofness in the very sinuosity of his figure. 
His velvet skull-cap, which was always pushed back on 
his head, exposed to view a forelock of golden hair. His 
long-skirted, well-fitting coat was of the richest broad- 
cloth I had ever seen. He wore a watch and chain that 
were said to be worth a small fortune. I hated him. He 
was repugnant to me for his Polish accent, for his good 
clothes, for his well-fed face, for his haughty manner, for 
the servile attention that was showered on him, and, 
above all, for his extraordinary memory. I had always 
been under the impression that the boys of well-to-do 
parents were stupid. Brains did not seem to be in 
their line. That this young man, who was so well sup- 
plied with this world’s goods, should possess a wonder- 
ful mind as well jarred on me as an injustice to us poor 
boys. 

I would seek comfort in the reflection that “the essence 
of scholarship lay in profundity and acumen rather than 
in the ability to rattle off pages like so many psalms.” 
Yet those “five hundred leaves” of his gave me no peace. 
Five hundred! The figure haunted me. Finally I set 
myself the task of memorizing five hundred leaves. It was 

45 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 


a gigantic undertaking, although my memory was rather 
above the average. I worked with iinflagging assiduity 
for weeks and weeks. Nobody was to know of my pur- 
pose until it had been achieved. I worked so hard and was 
so absorbed in my task that my interest in girls lost much 
of its usual acuteness. At times I had a sense of my own 
holiness. When I walked through the streets, on my way 
to or from the synagogue, I kept reciting some of the pages 
I had mastered. While in bed for the night, I whispered 
myself to sleep reciting Talmud. When I ate, some bit of 
Talmud was apt to be running through my mind. If 
there was a hitch, and I could not go on, my heart would 
sink within me. I would stop eating and make an effort 
to recall the passage. 

It was inevitable that the new character of my studies 
should sooner or later attract Reb Sender’s attention. 
My secret hung like a veil between us. He was jealous 
of it. Ultimately he questioned me, beseechingly, and 
I was forced to make a clean breast of it. 

Reb Sender beamed. The veil was withdrawn. Pres- 
ently his face fell again. 

“What I don’t like about it is your envy of the Pole,” 
he ^d, gravely. “Don’t take it ill, my son, but I am 
afraid you are envious and begrudging. Fight it, Davie. 
Give up stud5dng by heart. It is not with a pure motive 
you are doing it. Your studies are poisoned with hatred 
and malice. Do yx>u want to gladden my heart, Davie?” 

“I do. I will. What do you mean?” 

“Just step up to the Pole and beg his pardon for the evil 
thoughts you have harbored about him.” 

A minute later I stood in front of my hated rival, 
thrilling with the ecstasy of penitence. 

“I have sinned against you. Forgive me,” I said, with 
downcast eyes. 

The Pole was puzzled. 

“I envied you,” I explained. “I could not bear to 
hear everybody speak of the five hundred leaves you know 
by heart. So I wanted to show you that I could learn by 
heart just as much, if not more.” 

A suggestion of a sneer flitted across his well-fed face. 
It stung me as if it were some loathsome insect. His 
golden forelock exasperated me. 

46 


ENTER SATAN 

“And I could do it, too/’ I snapped. “I have learned 
more than fifty leaves already. It is not so much of a 
trick as I thought it was.” 

“ Is it not?” the Pole said, with a full-grown sneer. 

“You need not be so stuck up, anyhow,” I shot back, 
and turned away. 

Before I had reached Reb Sender, who had been watching 
us, I rushed back to the Pole. 

“I just want to say this,” I began, in a towering rage. 
“With all your boasted memory you would be glad to 
change brains with me.” 

His shoulders shook with soundless mirth. 

“Laugh away. But let Reb Sender examine both of us. 
Let him select a passage and see who of us can delve 
deeper into it, you or I? Memory alone is nothing.” 

“Isn’t it? Then why are you green with envy of me?” 
And once more he burst into a laugh, with a graceful jerk 
of his head which set my blood on fire. 

“You’re a pampered idiot.” 

“You’re green with envy.” 

“I’ll break every bone in you.” 

We fiew at each other, but Reb Sender and two other 
scholars tore us apart. 

“Shame!” the Talmudists cried, shrugging their shoul- 
ders in disgust. 

“Just like Gentiles,’^ some one commented. 

“It is an outrage to have the holy place desecrated in this 
manner.” 

“What has got into you?” Reb Sender said to me as he 
led me back to my desk. 

I resumed studying by heart with more energy than ever. 
“That’s all right!” I thought to myself. “I’ll have that 
silk-stocking of a fellow lick the dust of my shoes.” I now 
took special measures to guard my secret even from Reb 
Sender. One of these was to take a book home and to work 
there, staying away from synagogue as often as I could 
invent a plausible pretext. I was lying right and left. 
Satan chuckled in my face, but I did not care. I 
promised myself to settle my accounts with the Upper- 
most later on. The only thing that mattered now was 
to beat the Pole. 


47 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 


The sight of me learning the Word of God so diligently 
was a source of indescribable joy to my mother. She 
struggled to suppress her feeling, but from time to time a 
sigh would escape her, as though the rush of happiness was 
too much for her heart. 

Alas! this happiness of hers was not to last much longer. 


BOOK III 


I LOSE MY MOTHER 



CHAPTER I 


I T was Purim, the feast of Esther. Our school-boys 
were celebrating the downfall of Haman, and they were 
doing it in the same war-like fashion in which American 
boys celebrate their forefathers’ defiance of George III. 
The synagogues roared with the booming of fire-crackers, 
the report of toy pistols, the whir-whir of Purim rattles. 
It was four weeks to the great eight-day festival of Passover 
and my mother went to work in a bakery of unleavened 
bread. She toiled from eighteen to twenty hours a day, 
so that she often dozed off over her rolling-pin from sheer 
exhaustion. But then she earned far more than usual. 
Including tips from customers (the baker merely acted as a 
contractor for the families whose flour he transformed into 
flat, round, tasteless Passover cakes, or “matzoths”) she 
saved up, during the period, a little over twenty rubles. 
With a part of this sum she ordered a new coat for me and 
bought me a new cap. I remember that coat very well. 
It was of a dark-brown cotton sttiff, neat at the waist and 
with absurdly long skirts, of course. 

The Jewish Passover often concurs with the Christian 
Easter. This was the case in the year in question. One 
afternoon — ^it was the seventh day of our festival — I chanced 
to be crossing the Horse-market. As it was not market 
day, it was deserted save for groups of yormg Gentiles, 
civilians and soldiers, who were rolling brightly colored 
Easter eggs over the ground. My new long-skirted coat 
and side-locks provoked their mirth imtil one of them hit me 
a savage blow in the face, splitting my lower lip. Another 
rowdy snatched off my new cap — ^just because our people 
considered it a sin to go bareheaded. And, as I made my 
way, bleeding, with one hand to my lip and the other over 
my bare head, the company sent a shower of broken eggs 
and a chorus of jeers after me. 

51 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 

It was only a short distance from Abner’s Court. When 
I entered our basement and faced my mother, she stared 
at me for a moment, as though dumfounded, and then, 
slapping her hands together, she sobbed: 

“Woe is me! Darkness is me! What has happened to 
you?” 

When she had heard my story she stood silent awhile, 
looking aghast, and then left the house. 

“I’m going to kill him. I am just going to kill him,” 
she said, in measured accents which still ring in my ears. 

The bookbinder’s wife, the retired soldier, and I ran after 
her, imploring her not to risk her life on such a foolhardy 
errand, but she took no heed of us. 

“Foolish woman! You don’t even know who did it,” 
urged the soldier. 

“I’ll find out!” she answered. 

The bookbinder’s wife seized her by an arm, but she 
shook her off. I pleaded with her with tears in my eyes. 

“Go back,” she said to me, trying to be gentle while her 
eyes were lit with an ominous look. 

These were the last words I ever heard her utter. 

Fifteen minutes later she was carried into our basement 
unconscious. Her face was bruised and swollen and the 
back of her head was broken. She died the same evening. 

I have never been able to learn the ghastly details of her 
death. The police and an examining magistrate were said 
to be investigating the case, but nothing came of it. 

There was no lack of excitement among the Jews of 
Antomir. The funeral was expected to draw a vast crowd. 
But the epidemic of anti- Jewish atrocities of i88i and 1882 
were fresh in one’s mind, so word was passed round “not 
to irritate the Gentiles.” The younger and “modem” 
element in town took exception to this timidity. They 
insisted upon a demonstrative funeral. They were or- 
ganizing for self-defense in case the procession was inter- 
fered with, but the counsel of older people prevailed. As a 
consequence, the number of mourners following the hearse 
was even smaller than it would have been if my mother 
had died a natural death. And the few who did take part 
in the sad procession were unusually silent. A Jewish 
funeral without a choms of sobbing women was incon- 
ceivable in Antomir. Indeed, a pious matron who happens 

52 


I LOSE MY MOTHER 

to come across such a scene will join in the weeping, whether 
she had ever heard of the deceased or not. On this oc- 
casion, however, sobs were conspicuous by their absence. 

“ ’S-sh! ’s-sh! None of yom* wailing!” an old man kept 
admonishing the women. 

I spent the ‘‘ Seven Days ” (of mourning) in our basement, 
where I received visits from neighbors, from the families 
of my two distant relatives, from Reb Sender and other 
Talmudists of my synagopie. Among these was the Pole. 
This time my rival begged my forgiveness. I granted it, of 
course, but I felt that we never could like each other. 

There was a great wave of sympathy for me. Offers of 
assistance came pouring in in all sorts of forms. Had there 
been a Yiddish newspaper in town and such things as pub- 
lic meetings, the outburst might have crystallized into what, 
to me, would have been a great fortune. As it was, public 
interest in me died before anything tangible was done. 
Still, there were several prosperous families of the old- 
fashioned class, each of which wanted to provide me with 
excellent board. But then Reb Sender’s wife, in a fit of 
compassion and carried away by the prevailing spirit of the 
moment, claimed the sole right to feed me. 

“ I’ll take his mother’s place,” she said. “Whatever the 
Upper One gives us will be enough for him, too.” Her 
husband was happy, while I lacked the cotmage to over- 
rule them. 

As to lodgings, it was deemed most natural that I should 
sleep in some house of worship, as thousands of Talmud 
students did in Antomir and other towns. To put up with 
a synagogue bench for a bed and to “eat days” was even 
regarded as a desirable part of a young man’s Talmud 
education. And so I selected a pew in the Preacher’s 
Synagogue for my bed. I was better off than some others 
who lived in houses of God, for I had some of my mother’s 
bedding while they mostly had to sleep on hay pillows with 
a coat for a blanket. 

It was not until I found myself lying on this improvised 
bed that I realized the full extent of my calamity. During 
the first seven days of mourning I had been aware, of 
course, that something appalling had befallen me, but I 
had scarcely experienced anything like keen anguish. I 
had been in an excited, hazy state of mind, more conscious 

53 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 

of being the central figure of a great sensation than of my 
loss. As I went to bed on the synagogue bench, however, 
instead of in my old bunk at what had been my home, the 
fact that my mother was dead and would never be alive 
again smote me with crushing violence. It was as though 
I had just discovered it. I shall never forget that terrible 
night. 

At the end of the first thirty days of mourning I visited 
mother’s grave. “Mamma! Mammal” I shrieked, 
throwing myself upon the mound in a wild paroxysm of 
grief. 

The dinners which Reb Sender’s wife brought to the 
S3niagogue for her husband and myself were never quite 
enough for two, and for supper, which he had at home, 
she would bring me some bread and cheese or herring. 
Poor Reb Sender could not look me in the face. The 
situation grew more awkward every day. It was not long 
before his wife began to drop hints that I was hard to 
please, that she did far more than she could afford for me 
and that I was an ingrate. The upshot was that she 
“allowed” me to accept “days” from other families. 
But the well-to-do people had by now forgotten my ex- 
istence and the housewives who were still vying with one 
another in offering me meals were mostly of the poorer 
class. These strove to make me feel at home at their 
houses, and yet, in some cases at least, as I ate, I was 
aware of being watched lest I should constune too much 
bread. As a consequence, I often went away half hungry. 
All of which quickened my self-pity and the agony of my 
yearnings for mother. I grew extremely sensitive and 
more quarrelsome than I am naturally. I quarreled with 
one of my relatives, a woman,* and rejected the “day” 
which I had had in her house, and shortly after abandoned 
one of my other “days.” 

Reb Sender kept tab of my missing “days” and tried to 
make up for them by sharing his dinner with me. His wife, 
however, who usually waited for the dishes and so was 
present while I ate, was anything but an encouraging 
witness of her husband’s hospitality. The food would 
stick in my throat under her glances. I was repeatedly 
impelled abruptly to leave the meal, but refrained from 
doing so for Reb Sender’s sake. I obtained two new 

54 


I LOSE MY MOTHER 


“days.” One of these I soon forfeited, having been caught 
stealing a hunk of bread; but I kept the matter from Reb 
Sender. To conceal the truth from him I would spend 
the dinner hour in the street or in a little synagogue in 
another section of the city. Tidy Naphtali had recently 
retiimed to Antomir, and this house of worship was his 
home now. His vocal cords had been ruined by incessantly 
reading Talmud at the top of his lungs. He now spoke or 
read in a low, hoarse voice. He still spent most of his 
time at a reading-desk, but he had to content himself with 
whispering. 

I found a new “day,” but lost three of my old ones. 
Naphtali had as little to eat as I, yet he scarcely ever left 
his books. One late afternoon I sat by his side while he 
was reading in a spiritless whisper. Neither of us had 
Itmched that day. His curly head was propped upon his 
arm, his near-sighted eyes close to the book. He never 
stirred. He was too faint to sway his body or to gesticulate. 
I was musing wearily, and it seemed as though my hunger 
was a living thing and was taking part in my thoughts. 

“Do you know, Naphtali,” I said, “it is pleasant even 
to famish in company. If I were alone it would be harder 
to stand it. 'The misery of the many is a consolation.’” 

He made no answer. Minutes passed. Presently he 
turned from his desk. 

“Do you really think there is a God?” he asked, ir- 
relevantly. 

I stared. 

“Don’t be shocked. It is all bosh.” And he fell to 
swaying over his book. 

I was dumfoimded. “Why do you keep reading Tal- 
mud, then?” I asked, looking aghast. 

“Because I am a fool,” he returned, going on with his 
reading. A minute later he added, “ But you are a bigger 
one.” 

I was hurt and horrified. I tried to argue, but he went 
on murmiuing, his eyes on the folio before him. 

Finally I snapped : “You are a horrid atheist and a sinner 
in Israel. You are desecrating the holy place.” And I 
rushed from the little synagogue. 

His shocking whisper, “Do you really think there is a 
God?” haunted me all that afternoon and evening. He 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 


appeared like another man to me. I was burning to see 
him again and to smash his atheism, to prove to him that 
there was a God. But as I made a mental rehearsal of my 
argument I realized that I had nothing clear or definite to 
put forth. So I cursed Naphtali for an apostate, registered 
a vow to shun him, and was looking forward to the follow- 
ing day when I should go to see him again. 

My interest in the matter was not keen, however, and 
soon it died down altogether. Nothing really interested me 
except the fact that I had not enough to eat, that mother 
was no more, that I was all alone in the world. The shock 
of the catastrophe had produced a striking effect on me. 
My incessant breedings, and the corroding sense of my 
great irreparable loss and of my desolation had made a 
nerveless, listless wreck of me, a mere shadow of my former 
self. I was incapable of sustained thinking. 

My communions with God were quite rare now. Nor 
did He take as much interest in my studies as He used to. 
Instead of the Divine Presence shining down on me while 
I read, the face of my martyred mother would loom before 
me. Once or twice in my hungry rambles I visited 
Abner’s Coirrt and let my heart be racked by the sight of 
what had once been our home, mother’s and mine. I said 
prayers for her three times a day with great devotion, with 
a deep yearning. But this piety was powerless to restore 
me to my former feeling for the Talmud. 

I distinctly recall how I would shut my eyes and vision 
my mother looking at me from her grave, her heart con- 
tracted with anguish and pity for her famished orphan. It 
was an excruciating vision, yet I found comfort in it. I 
would mutely complain of the world to her. It would give 
me satisfaction to denounce the whole town to her. “Ah, 
I have got you!” I seemed to say to the people of Antomir. 
“The ghost of my mother and the whole Other World 
see you in all your heartlessness. You can’t wriggle out 
of it.” This was my revenge. I reveled in it. 

But, nothing daunted, the people of Antomir would go 
about their business as usual and my heart would sink 
with a sense of my helplessness. 

I was restless. I coveted diversion, company, and I saw 
a good deal of Naphtali. As for his Free Thought, it soon, 
after we had two mild quarrels over it, began to bore me. 

56 


I LOSE MY MOTHER 


It appeared that the huge tomes of the Talmud were not 
the only books he read these days. He spent much time, 
clandestinely, on little books written in the holy tongue on 
any but holy topics. They were taken up with such things 
as modem science, poetry, fiction, and, above all, criticism 
of our faith. He made some attempts to lure me into an 
interest in these books, but without avail. The only 
thing connected with them that appealed to me were the 
anecdotes that Naphtali would tell me, in his laconic way, 
concerning their authors. I scarcely ever listened to these 
stories without invoking imprecations upon the infidels, 
but I enjoyed them all the same. They were mostly con- 
cerned with their apostasy, but there were many that were 
not. Some of these, or rather the fact that I had first 
heard them from Naphtali, in my youth, were destined to 
have a peculiar bearing on an important event in my life, 
on something that occiirred many years later, when I was 
already a prosperous merchant in New York. They were 
about Doctor Rachaeles, a famous Hebrew writer who 
practised medicine in Odessa, and his son-in-law, a poet 
named Abraham Tevkin. Doctor Rachaeles’s daughter 
was a celebrated beauty and the poet’s courtship of her 
had been in the form of a long series of passionate letters 
addressed, not to his lady-love, but to her father. This 
love-story made a strong impression on me. The figures 
of the beautiful girl and of the enamoured young poet, as 
I pictured them, were vivid in my mind. 

“Did he write of his love in those letters?” I demanded, 
shyly. 

“He did not write of onions, did he?” Naphtali retorted. 

After a little I asked: “But how could she read those 
letters? She certainly does not read holy tongue?” 

“Go ask her.” 

“You’re a funny fellow. Did Tevkin get the girl?” 

“He did, and they have been married for many years. 
Why, did you wonder if you mightn’t have a chance?” 

“You’re impossible, Naphtali.” 

He smiled. 


5 


CHAPTER II 


O NE afternoon Napntali called on me at the Preacher’s 
Synagogue. 

“Have you got all your ‘ days’ ? ” he asked, in his whisper. 
^‘Why?’’ 

He had discovered a “treasure’’ — a pious, rich, elderly 
woman whose latest hobby was to care for at least eighteen 
poor Talmudists — eighteen being the numerical value of 
the letters composing the Hebrew word for “life.” Her 
name was Shiphrah Minsker. She belonged to one of the 
oldest families in Antomir, and her husband was equally 
well-born. Her religious zeal was of recent origin, in fact, 
and even now she wore her hair “Gentile fashion.” It 
was a great sin, but she had never worn a wig in her life, 
and putting on one now seemed to be out of the question. 
This hair of hers was of a dark-brown hue, threaded with 
silver, and it grew in a tousled abundance of unruly wisps 
that seemed to be symbolic of her harum-scarum character. 
She was as pugnacious as she was charitable, and as qmck 
to make up a quarrel as to pick one. Her husband, 
Michael Minsker, was a “worldly” man, with only a 
smattering of Talmud, and their younger children were 
being educated at the Russian schools. But they all 
humored her newly adopted old-fashioned ways, to a cer- 
tain extent at least, while she tolerated their “Gentile” 
ones as she did her own uncovered hair. Relegating her 
household affairs to a devoted old servant, with whom 
she was forever wrangling, Shiphrah spent most of her 
time raising contributions to her various charity funds, 
looking after her Talmud students, quarreling with her 
numerous friends, and begging their forgiveness. If she 
was unable to provide meals for a student in the houses of 
some people of her acquaintance she paid for his board out 
of her own purse. 

58 


I LOSE MY MOTHER 

Her husband was an exporter of grain and his business 
often took him to Koenigsberg, Prussia, for several weeks 
at a time. Occasions of this kind were hailed by Shiphrah 
as a godsend (in the literal sense of the term), for in his 
absence she could freely spend on her beneficiaries and even 
feed some of them at her own house. 

When I was introduced to her as “the son of the woman 
who had been killed on the Horse-market” and she heard, 
that I frequently had nothing to eat, she burst into tears 
and berated me soundly for not having knocked at her 
door sooner. 

“It’s terrible! It’s terrible!” she moaned, breaking^ 
into tears again. “ In fact I, too, deserve a spanking. To 
think that I did not look hkn up at once when that awful 
thing happened!” 

As a matter of fact, she had not done so because at the 
time of my mother’s death her house had been agog with a 
trouble of its own. But of this presently. 

She handed me a three-ruble bill and set about filling 
up the gaps in my eating calendar and substituting fat 
“ days ” for lean ones. 

She often came to see me at the synagogue, never empty- 
handed. Now she had a silver coin for me, now a pair of 
socks, a shirt, or perhaps a pair of trousers which some 
member of her family had discarded. Often, too, she 
would bring me a quarter of a chicken, cookies, or some 
other article of food from her own table. 

My days of hunger were at an end. I Kved in clover. 
“Now I can work,” I thought to myself, with the satisfac- 
tion of a well-filled stomach. “And work I will. I’ll show- 
people what I can do.” 

I applied myself to my task with ardor, but it did not 
last long. My former interest in the Talmud was gone. 
The spell was broken irretrievably. Now that I did not 
want for food, my sense of loneliness became keener than 
ever. Indeed, it was a novel sense of loneliness, quite 
unlike the one I had experienced before. 

My surroundings had somehow lost their former meaning. 
Life was devoid of savor, and I was thirsting for an appe- 
tizer, as it were, for some violent change, for piquant 
sensations. 

Then it was that the word America first caught my fancy. 

59 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 

The name was buzzing all around me. The great emi- 
gration of Jews to the United States, which had received 
its first impu'se two or three years before, was already in 
full swing. It may not be out of order to relate, briefly, 
how it had all come about. 

An anti-Semitic riot broke out in a southern town named 
Elisabethgrad in the early spring of i88i. Occurrences 
of this kind were, in those days, quite rare in Russia, and 
when they did happen they did not extend beyond the town 
of their origin. But the circumstances that surrounded 
the ElisabeOigrad outbreak were of a specific character. 
It took place one month after the assassination of the 
Czar, Alexander II. The actual size and influence of the 
“underground” revolutionary organization being an un- 
known quantity, St. Petersburg was full of the rumblings 
of a general uprising. The Elisabethgrad riot, however, 
was not of a revolutionary nature. Yet the police, so far 
from suppressing it, encouraged it. The example of the 
Elisabethgrad rabble was followed by the riffraff of other 
places. The epidemic quickly spread from city to city. 
Whereupon the scenes of lawlessness in the various cities 
were marked by the same method in the mob’s madness, 
by the same connivance on the part of the police, and by 
many other traits that clearly pointed to a common source 
of inspiration. It has long since bec®me a well-established 
historical fact that the anti-Jewish disturbances were en- 
couraged, even arranged, by the authorities as an outlet 
for the growing popular discontent with the Government. 

Coimt von Plehve was then at the head of the Police 
Department in the Ministry of the Interior. 

This bit of history repeated itself, on a larger scale, 
twenty-two years later, when Russia was in the paroxysm 
of a real revolution and when the ghastly massacres of 
Jews in Kishineff, Odessa, Kieff, and other cities were 
among the means employed in an effort to keep the masses 
“busy.” 

Count von Plehve then held the office of Prime Minister. 

To retiun to i88i and 1882. Thousands of Jewish 
families were left homeless. Of still greater moment was 
the moral effect which the atrocities produced on the whole 
Jewish population of Russia. Over five million people 
were suddenly made to realize that their birthplace was 

60 


I LOSE MY MOTHER 

not their home (a feeling which the great Russian revolu» 
tion has suddenly changed). Then it was that the cry “ To 
America!” was raised. It spread like wild-fire, even over 
those parts of the Pale of Jewish Settlement whidi lay 
outside the riot zone. 

This w^ the beginning of the great New Exodus that 
has been in progress for decades. 

My native town and the entire section to which it belongs 
had been immune from the riots, yet it caught the general 
contagion, and at the time I became one of Shiphrah’s wards 
hundreds of its inhabitants were going to America or plan- 
ning to do so. Letters full of wonders from emigrants 
already there went the rounds of eager readers and listeners 
until they were worn to shreds in the process. 

I succumbed to the spreading fever. It was one of these 
letters from America, in fact, which put the notion of 
emigrating to the New World definitely in my mind. 
An illiterate woman brought it to the synagogue to have it 
read to her, and I happened to be the one to whom she ad- 
dressed her request. The concrete details of that letter 
gave New York tangible form in my imagination. It 
haimted me ever after. , 

The United States lured me not merely as a land of milk 
and honey, but also, and perhaps chiefly, as one of mystery, 
of fantastic experiences, of marvelous transformations. 
To leave my native place and to seek my fortune in that 
distant, weird world seemed to be just the kind of sensa- 
tional adventure my heart was hankering for. 

When I unburdened myself of my project to Reb Sender 
he was thunderstruck. 

“To America!” he said. “Lord of the World! But 
one becomes a Gentile there.” 

“Not at all,” I sought to reassure him. “There are lots 
of good Jews there, and they don't neglect their Tahnud, 
either.” 

The amount that was necessary to take me to America 
loomed staggeringly large. Where was it to come from? 
I thought of approaching Shiphrah, but the idea of her 
helping me abandon my Talmud and go to live in a godless 
country seemed preposterous. So I began by saving the 
small allowance which I received from her and by selling 
some of the clothes and food she brought me. For the 

6i 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 


evening meal I usually received some rye bread and a small 
coin for cheese or herring, so I invariably added the coin 
to my little hoard, relishing the bread with thoughts of 
America. 

While I was thus pinching and saving pennies I was 
continually casting about for some more effective way of 
raising the sum that would take me to New York. 

I confided my plan to Naphtali. 

“Not a bad idea,” he said, “but you will never raise the 
money. You are a master of dreams, David.” 

“I’ll get the money, and, what is more, when I am in 
America I shall bring you over there, too.” 

“May your words pass from yoiu: lips into the ear of 
God.” 

“I thought you did not believe in God.” 

“How long will you believe in Him after you get to 
America?” 


BOOK IV 

MATILDA 








'f, ■■ 



CHAPTER I 


I COULD scarcely think of anything but America. I 
read every letter from there that I could obtain. I was 
constantly seeking information about the country and the 
opportimities it held out to a man of my type, and cud- 
geling my brains for some way of scraping together the 
formidable sum. I was restless, sleepless, and finally, 
when I caught a slight cold, my health broke down so 
completely that I had to be taken to the hospital. Shiphrah 
visited me every day, calling me poor orphan boy and 
quarreling with the superintendent over me. One after- 
noon, after I had been discharged, when she saw me at the 
synagogue, feeble and emaciated, she gasped. 

“You’re a cruel, heartless man,” she flared up, addressing 
herself to the beadle. “The poor boy needs a good soft 
bed, fine chicken soup, and real care. Why didn’t you 
let me know at once? Come on, David!’’ 

“Where to?’’ I inquired, timidly. 

“None of your business. Come on. I’m not going to 
take you to the woods, you may be sure of that. I want 
you to stay in my house until you are well rested and 
strong enough to study. Don’t you like it?’’ she added, 
with a wink to the beadle. 

It appeared that her husband was away on one of his 
prolonged business excursions. Otherwise installing in her 
“modern ’’ home an old-fashioned, ridiculous young creature 
like a Tahnud student would have been out of the question. 

I followed her with fast-beating heart. I knew that her 
family was “modem,’’ that her children spoke Russian 
and “behaved like Gentiles,’’ that there was a grown young 
woman among them and that her name was Matilda. 

The case of this young woman had been the talk of the 
town the year before. She had been persuaded to marry 
a man for whom she did not care, and shortly after the 

65 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 

wedding and after a sensational passage at arms between 
his people and hers, she made her father pay him a small 
fortune for divorcing her. 

Matilda’s family being one of the “upper ten” in our 
town, its members were frequently the subject of envious 
gossip, and so I had known a good deal about them even 
before Shiphrah befriended me. I had heard, for example, 
that Matilda had received her early education in a board- 
ing-school in Germany (in accordance with a custom that 
had been in existence among people of her father’s class 
until recently) ; that she had subsequently studied Russian 
and other subjects under Russian tutors at home; and 
that her two brothers, who were younger than she, were at 
the local Russian gymnasium, or high school. I had heard, 
also, that Matilda was very pretty. That she was well 
dressed went without saying. 

All this both fascinated and cowed me. 

Suddenly Shiphrah paused, as though bethinking herself 
of something. ‘ ‘ W ait. Don’t stir, ’ ’ she said, rushing back. 
Ten or fifteen minutes later she returned, saying: “I was 
not long, was I? I just went to get the beadle’s forgiveness. 
Had insulted him for nothing. But he’s a dummy, all the 
same. Come on, David.” 

Arrived at her house, she introduced me to her old 
servant, in the kitchen. 

“ He’ll stay a week with us, perhaps more,” she explained. 
“I want you to build him up. Fatten him up like a 
Passover goose. Do you hear?” 

The servant, a tall, spare woman, with an extremely 
dark face tinged with blue, began by darting hostile glances 
at me. 

“Look at the way she is staring at him!” Shiphrah 
growled. “He is the son of the woman who was murdered 
at the Horse-market.” 

The old servant started. “Is he?” she said, aghast. 

“Are you pleased now? Will you take good care of 
him?” 

“May the Uppermost give him a good appetite.” 

As Shiphrah led me from the kitchen into another room 
she said : “ She took a fancy to you. It will be all right.” 

She towed me into a vast sitting-room, so crowded 
with new furniture that it had the appearance of a fumiture- 

66 


MATILDA 


store. There were many rooms in the apartment and they 
all produced a similar impression. I subsequently learned 
that the superabundance of sofas, chests of drawers, chairs, 
or bric-^-brac-stands was due to Shiphrah’s passion for 
bargains, a weakness which made her the fair game of 
tradespeople and artisans. Several of her wardrobes and 
bureaus were packed full of all sorts of things for which 
she had no earthly use and many of which she had smuggled 
in when her husband and the children were out. 

Ensconced in a corner of an enormous green sofa in the 
big crowded sitting-room, with a book in her lap, we found a 
young woman with curly brown hair and sparkling brown 
eyes set in a small oval face. She looked no more than 
twenty, but when her mother addressed her as Matilda 
I knew that I was facing the heroine of the sensational 
divorce. She was singularly interesting, but pretty she 
certainly was not. Her Gentile name had a world of charm 
for my ear. 

One of the trifles that clung to my memory is the fact 
that upon seeing her I felt somethihg like amazement 
at her girlish appearance. I had had a notion that a mar- 
ried woman, no matter how young, must have a married 
face, something quite, distinct from the countenance of a 
maiden, while this married woman did not begin to look 
married. 

Matilda got up, cast a frowning side-glance at her mother, 
and walked over to one of the four immense windows 
illuminating the room. Less than a minute later she 
turned around and crossed over to her mother’s side. 

She was small, but well made, and her movements were 
brisk, firm, elastic. 

“ Come on, mother, there’s something I want to tell you,” 
she said, a jerk of her curly head indicating the adjoining 
room. 

“I have no secrets,” Shiphrah growled. “What do you 
want?” 

A snappish whispered conference ensued., the trend of 
which was at once betrayed in an acrimonious retort by 
Shiphrah : 

“Just keep your foolish nose out of my affairs, will you? 
When I say he is going to stay here for some time I mean 
it. Don ’ t you mind her, David . ’ ’ 

67 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 


“Mother! Mother! Mother!” Matilda trilled with a 
gesture of disgust, and flounced out of the room. 

I felt my face turning all colors, and at the same time her 
“Mother! Mother! Mother!” (instead of “Mamma! Mam- 
ma! Mamma!”) was echoing in my brain enchantingly. 

Presently a fair-complexioned youth of eighteen or nine- 
teen caine in, apparently attracted by his mother’s angry 
voice. He wore a blue coat with silver lace and silver but- 
tons, the uniform of a Russian high school, which sent a 
flutter of mixed envy and awe through me. He threw a 
frowning glance at me, and withdrew. Two smaller chil- 
dren, a uniformed boy and a little girl, made their appear- 
ance, talking in Russian noisily. At sight of me they fell 
silent, looked me over, from my side-locks to the edge of 
my long-skirted coat, and then took to whispering and 
giggling. 

“Clear out, you devils!” Shiphrah shouted, stamping her 
foot. “Shoo!” 

A young chambermaid passed through the room, and 
Shiphrah stopped her long enough to introduce me and to 
command her to look after me as if I were one of the family 
— “even better.” 


CHAPTER II 


T he spacious sitting-room was used as a breakfast- 
room as well. It was in this room, on the enormous 
green sofa, that my bed was made for the night. It was 
by far the most comfortable bed I had ever slept in. 

Early the next morning, after I finished my long prayer 
and had put away my phylacteries, the young chambermaid 
removed the bedding and the swarthy old servant served 
me my breakfast. 

“Go wash your hands and eat in good health. Eat 
hearty, and may it well agree with you,” she said, with a 
compound of deep commiseration, reverence, and disdain. I 
went to the kitchen, where I washed my hands, and, while 
wiping them, muttered the brief prayer which one offers 
before eating. As I returned to the sitting-room I found 
Matilda there. She was seated at some distance from the 
table upon which my breakfast was spread. She wore a 
sort of white kimono. One did not have to stand on cere- 
mony with a fellow who did not even wear a stiff collar 
and a necktie. Nor did I know enough to resent her 
costume. She did not order anything to eat for herself, 
not even a glass of tea. It seemed as though she had come 
in for the express purpose of eying me out of countenance. 
If she had, she succeeded but too well. Her silent glances 
fell on me like splashes of hot water. I was so disconcerted 
I could not swallow my food. There were centuries of 
difference between her and myself, not to speak of the 
economic chasm that separated us. To me she was an 
aristocrat, while I was a poor, wretched “day” eater, a 
cross between a beggar and a recluse. I dared not even 
look at her. Tahnud students were expected to be the 
shyest creatimes imder the sun. On this occasion I cer- 
tainly was. 

The other children entered the room. They were dress- 
69 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 


ing themselves, eating and studying their Gentile lessons 
all at once. Matilda had a mild altercation with Yeffim, 
her eighteen-year-old brother, ordered breakfast for her- 
self, and seemed to have forgotten my existence. Her 
mother came in and took to cloying me with food. 

At about 4 o’clock in the afternoon I was alone in the 
drawing-room. I stood at the piano — the first I had ever 
laid eyes on — timidly soimding some of the keys, when I 
heard approaching voices. With my heart in my mouth, 
I rushed over to the nearest window, where I paused, 
feigning interest in some passing peasant teams. Pres- 
ently Matilda made her appearance, accompanied by two 
girl friends. 

The three young women were chattering in Russian, a 
language of which I imderstood scarcely three dozen words. 
I could conjecture, however, that the subject of their talk 
was no other than my own quailing personality. 

Suddenly Matilda addressed herself to me in Yiddish: 
“Look here, yoimg man! Don’t you know it is bad 
manners for a gentleman to stand with his back to ladies?’’ 

I faced about, all flushed and scared. 

“That’s better,” she said, gaily. “Never mind staring 
at the floor. Give us a look, will you? Don’t act as a 
shy bridegroom.” 

I made no answer. The room seemed to be in a whirl. 

“Why don’t you speak?” Matilda insisted, concealing 
her quizzical purpose under a well-acted air of gravity. 

Her two friends roared, and, spurred on by their merri- 
ment, she continued to make game of me. 

“Won’t you give us one look, at least? Do, please! 
Come, my mother will never find out you have been guilty 
of a great sin like that.” 

I was dying to get up and fling out of the room, but I 
felt glued to the spot. Their cruel sport, which made me 
faint with embarrassment and misery, had something in- 
expressibly alluring in it. 

One of the two girls said something in Russian of which 
I caught the word “kiss” and which was greeted by a new 
outburst of laughter. I was terror-stricken. 

“Well, pious Jew!” Matilda resumed. “Suppose a girl 
were to give you a kiss. What would you do? Commit 

70 


MATILDA 

suicide, would you? Well, never fear; we won’t be as 
cmel as all that. I tell you what, though. I’ll hide your 
side-locks behind your ears. I just want to see how you 
would look without them.” At this she stepped up close 
to me and reached out her hands for my two appendages. 

I pushed her off. “Please, let me alone,” I protested. 

“At last we have heard his voice. Bravo! We’re 
making headway, aren’t we?” 

At this point her mother’s angry voice made itself heard. 
Matilda desisted, with a merry remark to her friends. 

The next morning when she and I were alone she tan- 
talized me again. She made another attempt to tuck my 
side-locks behind my ears. As we were alone I had more 
courage. 

“If you don’t stop I’ll go away from here,” I said, in a 
rage. “What do you want of me?” 

As I thus gave vent to my resentment I instinctively 
felt that, so far from causing her tb avoid me, it would 
quicken her rompish interest in me. And I hoped it 
would. 

“’S-sh! don’t yell,” she said, startled. “Can’t you take 
a joke?” 

“A nice joke, that.” 

“Very well, I won’t do it again. I didn’t know you were 
a touch-me-not.” After a pause she resumed, in grave, 
friendly accents: “Come, don’t be angry. I want to talk 
to you. Look here. Is there any sense in your wasting 
your life the way you do? Look at the way you are 
dressed, the way you live generally. Besides, the idea of 
a young man like you not being able to speak a word of 
Russian! Aren’t you ashamed of yourself? Why, mother 
says you are remarkably bright. Isn’t it a pity that you 
should throw it all away? Why don’t you try to study 
Russian, geography, history? Why don’t you try to be- 
come an educated man?” 

“The idea!” I said, with a laugh. 

My confusion was gone, partly, at least. I looked her full 
in the face. 

She flared up. “The idea!” she mocked me. “Rather 
say, ‘The idea of a bright young fellow being so ignorant!’ 
Did you ever hear of a provoking thing like that?” 

n 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 

There was a good deal of her mother’s helter-skelter ex- 
plosiveness in her. 

Now, that I had scanned her features in the light of the 
fact that she was a married woman, I read that fact into 
them. She did look married, I remarked to myself. Her 
exposed hair gave her an effect of “aristocratic” wickedness 
and wantonness which repelled and drew me at once. She 
was a girl, and yet she was a married woman. This duality 
of hers deepened the fascinating mystery of the distance 
between us. 

She proceeded to draw me out. She made me tell her 
the story of my young life, and I obeyed her but too will- 
ingly. I told her my whole tale of woe, reveling in my own 
rehearsal of my sufferings and more especially in the ex- 
pressions of horror and heartfelt pity which it elicited 
from her. 

“My God! My God!” she cried, gasping and wringing 
her hands. “Poor boy!” or, “Oh, I can’t hear it! I can’t 
hear it! It is enough to drive one crazy.” 

At one point, as I described the pangs of hunger which 
I had often borne, there were tears in her interesting eyes. 

When I had finished my story, flushed with a sense of my 
histrionic success, she ordered tea and preserves, as though 
to indemnify me for my past sufferings. 

“All the more reason for you to study Russian and to 
become an educated man,” she said, as she put sugar into 
my glass. She cited the cases of former Talmudists, poor 
and friendless like myself, who had studied at the uni- 
versities, fighting every inch of their way, till they had 
achieved success as physicians, lawyers, writers. She 
spoke passionately, often with the absurd acerbity of her 
mother. “ It’s a crime for a young man like you to throw 
himself away on that idiotic Talmud of yours,” she said, 
pacing up and down the room fiercely. 

All this sounded shockingly wicked, and yet it did not 
shock me in the least. 

“I have a plan,” I said. 

When she heard what I wanted to do she shook her head 
and frowned. She said, in substance, that America was a 
land of dollars, not of education, and that she wanted me 
to be an educated man. I assured her that I should study 
English in America and, after I had laid up some money, 

72 


MATILDA 


prepare for college there (she could have made me promise 
anything). But colleges in which the instruction was not 
in Russian failed to appeal to her imagination. 

Still, when she saw that my heart was set on the project, 
she yielded. She seemed to like the fervor with which I 
defended my cause, and the notion of my going to a far- 
away land was apparently beginning to have its effect. 
I was the hero of an adventure. Gradually she became 
quite enthusiastic about my plan. 

“I tell you what. I can raise the money for you,” she 
said, with a gesture of sudden resolution. “How much is 
it?” 

When I said, forlornly, that it would come to about 
eighty rubles, she declared, gravely: 

“That’s all right. I shall get it for you. Only, say 
nothing to mother about it.” 

I thought myself in a flurry of joy over this windfall, but 
a little later, when I was left to myself, I became aware 
that the flurry I was in was of quite a different nature. 
When I tried to think of America I found that my ambition 
in that direction had lost its former vitality. 

I was deeply in love with Matilda. 

6 


CHAPTER III 


S HE continued to treat me in a patronizing, playful 
way; but we were supposed to be great friends and I 
asked myself no questions. 

“The money is assured,” she once announced. “You 
shall get it in a few days. You may begin to pack your 
great baggage,” she jested. 

My heart sank within me, but I feigned exultation. 

“ Do you deserve it, pious soul that you are?” she laughed. 
And casting a glance at my side-locks, she added: “I do 
wish you would cut off those horrid things of yours. You 
won’t take them to America, will you?” 

I smiled. Small as was my stock of information of the 
New World, I knew enough of it to understand, in a 
general way, that side-locks were out of place there. 

She proceeded to put my side-locks behind my ears, and 
this time I did not object. She then smoothed them down, 
the touch of her fingers thrilling me through and through. 
Then she brought a hand-glass and made me look at 
myself. 

“Do you see the difference?” she demanded. “If you 
were not rigged out like the savage that you are you 
wouldn’t be a bad-looking fellow, after all. Why, girls 
might even fall in love with you. But then what does a 
pious soul like you know about such things as love?” 

“How do you know I don’t?” I ventured to say, blushing 
like a poppy. 

“Do you, really?” she said, with mischievous surprise. 

I nodded. 

“Well, well. So you are not quite so saintly as I thought 
you were! Perhaps you have even been in love yourself? 
Have you? Tell me.” 

I kept silent. My' heart was throbbing wildly. 

“ Do you love me?” 


74 


MATILDA 


I nodded once more. My heart stood still. 

“Kiss me, then.” 

She put my arms around her, made me clasp her to my 
breast, and we kissed, passionately. 

I suddenly felt ten years older. 

She broke away from me, jiimping around, slapping her 
hands and bubbling over with tritimphant mirth, as she 
shouted; “ There is a pious soul for you! There is a pious 
soul for you!” 

A thought of little Red Esther of my childhood days 
flashed through my brain, of the way she would force me to 
“sin” and then gloat over my “fall.” 

“A penny for your piety,” Matilda added, gravely. 
“When you are in America you’ll dress like a Gentile and 
even shave. Then you won’t look so ridiculous. Good 
clothes would make another man of you.” At this she 
looked me over in a business-like sort of way. “Pretty 
good figure, that,” she concluded. 

In the evening of that day, when there was company in 
the house, she bore herself as though she did not know me. 
But the next morning, after the children had gone to school 
and her mother was away on her various missions, she made 
me put on the glittering coat and cap of her brother’s 
Sunday uniform. 

“It’s rather too small for you, but it’s becoming all the 
same,” she said, enthusiastically. “If mamma came in 
now she would not know you. But then there would be a 
nice how-do-you-do if she did.” She gave a titter which 
rolled through my very heart. “Well, Mr. Gymnasist,^ 
are you really in love with me?” 

“Don’t make fun of me, pray,” I implored her. “It 
hurts, you know.” 

“Very well, I sha’n’t. But you haven’t answered my 
question.” 

“What question?” 

“What a poor memory you have! And yet mother says 
you have ‘a good head.’ Try to remember.” 

“I do remember yoiir question.” 

“Then what is your answer?” 

“Yes.” 


'A pupil of a gymnasium or high school. 

75 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 


“ Yes ! ” she mocked me . ‘ ‘ That ’s not the way gentlemen 

declare their love.” 

“What else shall I say?” 

“What else! Well, say: T am ready to die for you. 
You are the sunshine of my life.’ ” 

“‘You are the sunshine of my life,’” I echoed, with a 
smile that was a combination of mirth and resentment. 

“ ‘ You are my happiness, my soul. The world would be 
dark without you.’ ” 

“I am no baby to parrot somebody else’s words.” 

“Then you don’t love me.” 

“Yes, I do. But I hate to be made fun of. Don’t! 
Please don’t!” I said it with a beseeching, passionate 
tremor in my voice, and all at once I clasped her violently 
to me and was about to kiss her. She put up her hps re- 
sponsively, but suddenly she wrenched herself back. 

“Easy, easy, you saintly Talmudist,” she said, good- 
naturedly. “You must not forget that you are not a 
gymnasist, that to kiss a woman is a sin, a great sin. You’ll 
be beaten with rods of iron in the world to come. Well, 
good-by,” she concluded, gravely. “I must go. Take off 
that coat and cap. Mamma may come in at any moment.” 
She showed me where to hang them. 


CHAPTER IV 


I N my incessant reveries of her I developed the theory 
that if I abandoned my plan about going to America 
she would have her father send me to college with a view 
to my marrying her. Indeed, matches of this kind were 
not an unusual arrangement in our town (nor are they in 
the Jewish districts of New York, Philadelphia, Boston, 
or Chicago, for example). 

My bed was usually made on the enormous green sofa 
in the spacious sitting-room. One night, when I was 
asleep on that great sofa, I was suddenly aroused by the 
touch of a hand. 

“’S-sh,” I heard Matilda’s whisper. “I want to talk to 
you. I can’t sleep, anyhow. I don’t know why. So I 
was thinking of all kinds of things till I came to your plan 
about America. It is foolish. Why go so far? Perhaps 
something can be done to get you into high school and then 
into the university.” 

“I have guessed it right, then,” I exclaimed within my- 
self. The room was pitch-dark. Her white kimono was 
all I could see of her. 

She explained certain details. She spoke in a very low 
undertone, with great earnestness. I took her by the hand 
and drew her down to a seat on the edge of the sofa beside 
me. She offered no resistance. She continued to talk, 
partly in the same undertone, partly in whispers, with her 
hand remaining in mine. I was aflame with happiness, yet 
I listened intently. I felt sure that she was my bride-to-be, 
that it was only a matter of days when our engagement 
would be celebrated. My heart went out to her with a 
passion that seemed to be sanctioned by God and men. 
I strained down her head and kissed her, but that was the 
stainless kiss of a man yearning upon the lips of his be- 
trothed. I clasped her fiimsily garmented form, kissed 

77 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 

her again and again, let her kiss and bite me; and still it 
all seemed legitimate, or nearly so. I saw in it an emphatic 
confirmation of my feeling that she did not regard herself a 
stranger to me. That mattered more than anything else 
at this moment. 

“You’re a devil,”' she whispered, slapping me on both 
cheeks, “a devil with side-locks.” And she broke into a 
suppressed laugh. 

“I’ll study as hard as I can,” I assured her, with boyish 
exultation. “You’ll see what I can do. The Gentile books 
are child’s play in comparison with the Talmud.” 

I went into details. She took no part in my talk, but 
she let me go on. I became so absorbed in what I was 
saying that my caresses ceased. I sat up and spoke 
quite audibly. 

“ ’S-sh!” she cautioned me in an irritated whisper. 

I dropped my voice. She listened for another minute 
or two and then, suddenly rising, she said: 

“Oh, you are a Talmud student, after all,” and her in- 
distinct kimono vanished in the darkness. 

I felt crushed, but I was sure that the words “Talmud 
student,” which are Yiddish for “ninny,” merely referred 
to my rendering our confab dangerous by speaking too loud. 

The next afternoon she kissed me once more, calling me 
Talmud student again. But she was apparently getting 
somewhat fidgety about our relations. She was more 
guarded, more on the alert for eavesdroppers, as though 
somebody had become suspicious. My Gentile education 
she never broached again. Finally when a letter came from 
her father announcing his speedy return and Shiphrah 
hastened to terminate my stay at the house, Matilda was 
obviously glad to have me go. 

“I shall bring you the money to the synagogue,” she 
whispered as I was about to leave. 

I was stunned. I left in a turmoil of misery and per- 
plexity, yet not in despair. 

When I returned to the synagogue everybody and every- 
thing in it looked strange to me. Reb Sender was dearer 
than ever, but that was chiefly because I was longing for a 
devoted friend. I was dying to relieve my fevered mind by 
telling him all and seeking advice, but I did not. 

78 


MATILDA 


“Are you still weak?” he asked, tenderly, looking closer 
into my eyes. . 

“Oh, it is not that, Reb Sender.” 

“Is it the death of your dear mother — peace upon her?”’ 

“Yes, of course. That and lots of other things.” 

“It will all pass. She will have a bright paradise, and 
The Upper One will help you. Don’t lose heart, my boy,” 

I ran over to Naphtali’s place. We talked of Shiphrah 
and her children — at least I did. He asked about Matilda, 
and I answered reluctantly. Now and again I felt im- 
pelled to tell him all. It would have been such a relief 
to ease my mind of its cruel burden and to hear some- 
body’s, anybody’s opinion about it. But his laconical 
questions and answers were anything but encouraging. 

I spent many an hour in his company, but he was: 
always absorbed in the Talmud, or in some of his infidel 
books. The specific character of my restlessness was lost 
upon him. 

I was in the grip of a dull, enervating, overpowering 
agony that seemed to be weighing my heart down and filling 
my throat with pent-up sobs. I was writhing inwardly, 
praying for Matilda’s mercy. It was the most excruciating 
pain I had ever experience. I remember it distinctly in 
every detail. If I now wished to imagine a state of mind 
driving one to suicide I could not do it better than by re- 
calling my mental condition in those days. 

In point of fact I took pride in my misery. “I am in 
love. I am no mere slouch of a Talmud student,” I would 
say to myself. 

In the evening of the fourth day, as I was making a pre- 
tense at reading Talmud, a poor boy came in to call me out. 
In the alley outside the house of worship I found Matilda. 
She had the money with her. 

“ I don’t think I want it now,” I said. “ I don’t care to 
go to America.” 

“Why?” she asked, impatiently. “Oh, take it and let 
me be done with it,” she said, forcing a small packet into 
my hand. “I have no time to bother with you. Go to 
America. I wish you good luck.” 

“But I’ll miss you. I sha’n’t be able to live without 
you.” 


79 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 


“What? Are you crazy?” she said, sternly. “You for- 
get your place, young man!” 

She stalked hastily away, her form, at once an angel of 
light and a messenger of death, being swallowed up by the 
gloom. 

Ten minutes later, when I was at my book again, my 
heart bleeding and my head in a daze, I was called out 
once more. 

Again I foimd her standing in the lane. 

“I did not mean to hurt your feelings,” she said. “I 
wish you good luck from the bottom of my heart.” 

She uttered it with a warm cordiality, and yet the note 
of impatience which rang in her voice ten minutes before 
was again there. 

“Try to become an educated man in America,” she 
added. “That’s the main thing. Good-by. You have 
my best wishes. Good-by.” 

And before I had time to say anything she shook my 
hand and was gone. 


CHAPTER V 


LITTLE over three weeks had elapsed. It was two 



days after Passover. I had just solemnized the first 
anniversary of my mother’s death. The snow had melted. 
Each of my five senses seemed to be thrillingly aware of the 
presence of spring. 

I was at the railway station. Clustered about me were 
Reb Sender and his wife, two other Talmudists from the 
Preacher’s Synagogue, the retired old soldier with the 
formidable side- whiskers, and Naphtali. 

As I write these words I seem to see the group before me. 
It is one of those scenes that never grow dim in one’s 
memory. 

“Be a good Jew and a good man,” Reb Sender mur- 
mured to me, confusedly. “Do not forget that there is a 
God in heaven in America as well as here. Do not forget 
to write us.” 

Naphtali, speaking in his hoarse whisper, half in jest, 
half in earnest, made me repeat my promise to send him a 
“ship ticket” from America. I promised everything that 
was asked of me. My head was swimming. 

While the first bell was sounding for the passengers to 
board the train, Shiphrah rushed in, puffing for breath. 
I looked at the door to see if Matilda was not following her. 
She was not. 

The group around me made way for the rich woman. 

“Here,” she said, handing me a ten-ruble bill and a pack- 
age. “ There is a boiled chicken in it, and some other things, 
provided you won’t neglect your Talmud in America.” 

A minute later she drew her purse from her skirt pocket, 
produced a five-ruble bill, and put it into my hand. That 
all the other money I had for my journey had come from 
her daughter she had not the remotest idea. 

I made my final farewells amid a hubbub of excited 
voices and eyes glistening with tears. 


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I DISCOVER AMERICA 



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CHAPTER I 



‘WO weeks later I was one of a multitude of steerage 


i passengers on a Bremen steamship on my way to 
New York. Who can depict the feeling of desolation, 
homesickness, imcertainty, and anxiety with which an 
emigrant makes his first voyage across the ocean? I 
proved to be a good sailor, but the sea frightened me. 
The thumping of the engines was drumming a ghastly 
accompaniment to the awesome whisper of the waves. 
I felt in the embrace of a vast, uncanny force. And 
echoing through it all were the heart-lashing words: 

“Are you crazy? You forget your place, yoimg man!" 

When Columbus was crossing the Atlantic, on his first 
great voyage, his men doubted whether they would ever 
reach land. So does many an America-bound emigrant 
to this day. Such, at least, was the feeling that was lurking 
in my heart while the Bremen steamer was carrying me to 
New York. Day after day passes and all you see about 
you is an unbroken waste of water, an unrelieved, a hope- 
less monotony of water. You know that a change ^1 
come, but this knowledge is confined to your brain. Your 
senses are skeptical. 

In my devotions, which I performed three times a day, 
without counting a benediction before every meal and 
every drink of water, grace after every meal and a prayer 
before going to sleep, I would mentally plead for the 
safety of the ship and for a speedy sight of land. My 
scanty luggage included a pair of phylacteries and a plirnip 
little prayer-book, with the Book of Psalms at the end. 
The prayers I knew by heart, but I now often said psalms, 
in addition, particularly when the sea looked angry and the 
pitching or rolling was unusually violent. I would read 
all kinds of psalms, but my favorite among them was the 
104th, generally referred to by oiu* people as “Bless the 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 


Lord, 0 my soul,” its opening words in the original Hebrew. 
It is a poem on the power and wisdom of God as mani- 
fested in the wonders of nature, some of its verses dealing 
with the sea. It is said by the faithful every Saturday 
afternoon during the fall and winter; so I could have 
recited it from memory; but I preferred to read it in my 
prayer-book. For it seemed as though the familiar words 
had changed their identity and meaning, especially those 
concerned with the sea. Their divine inspiration was now 
something visible and audible. It was not I who was 
reading them. It was as though the waves and the clouds, 
the whole far-flung scene of restlessness and mystery, were 
whispering to me: 

“ Thou who coverest thyself with light as with a garment, 
who stretchest out the heavens like a curtain: who layeth 
the beams of his chambers in the waters: who maketh 
the clouds his chariot : who walketh upon the wings of the 
wind. ... So is this great and wide sea wherein are things 
creeping innumerable, both small and great beasts. There 
go the ships: there is that leviathan whom thou hast made 
to play therein. ...” 

The relentless presence of Matilda in my mind worried 
me immeasurably, for to think of a woman who is a stranger 
to you is a sin, and so there was the danger of the vessel 
coming to grief on my account. And, as though to spite 
me, the closing verse of Psalm 104 reads, “Let the sinners 
be consumed out of the earth and let the wicked be no 
more.” I strained every nerve to keep Matilda out of 
my thoughts, but without avail. 

When the discoverers of America saw land at last they 
fell on their knees and a hymn of thanksgiving burst from 
their souls. The scene, which is one of the most thrilling 
in history, repeats itself in the heart of every immigrant 
as he comes in sight of the American shores. I am at a 
loss to convey the peculiar state of mind that the experience 
created in me. 

When the ship reached Sandy Hook I was literally over- 
come with the beauty of the landscape. 

The immigrant’s arrival in his new home is like a second 
birth to him. Imagine a new-born babe in possession of a 
fully developed intellect. Would it ever forget its entry 
into the world? Neither does the immigrant ever forget 

86 


I DISCOVER AMERICA 

his entry into a country which is, to him, a new world in the 
profoundest sense of the term and in which he expects to 
pass the rest of his life. I conjure up the gorgeousness of 
the spectacle as it appeared to me on that clear June morn- 
ing: the magnificent verdure of Staten Island, the tender 
blue of sea and sky, the dignified bustle of passing craft — 
above all, those fioating, squatting, multitudinously win- 
dowed palaces which I subsequently learned to call ferries. 
It was all so utterly unlike anything I had ever seen or 
dreamed of before. It unfolded itself like a divine revela- 
tion. I was in a trance or in something closely resembling 
one. 

“This, then, is America!” I exclaimed, mutely. The 
notion of something enchanted which the name had always 
evoked in me now seemed fully borne out. 

In my ecstasy I could not help thinking of Psalm 104, 
and, opening my little prayer-book, I glanced over those 
of its verses that speak of hills and rocks, of grass and 
trees and birds. 

My transport of admiration, however, only added to my 
sense of helplessness and awe. Here, on shipboard, I was 
sure of my shelter and food, at least. How was I going to 
procure my sustenance on those magic shores? I wished 
the remaining hour could be prolonged indefinitely. 

Psahn 104 spoke reassuringly to me. It reminded me of 
the way God took care of man and beast: “Thou openest 
thine hand and they are filled with good.” But then the 
very next verse warned me that “Thou hidest thy face, they 
are troubled: thou takest away their breath, they die.” 
So I was praying God not to hide His face from me, but to 
open His hand to me; to remember that my mother had 
been murdered by Gentiles and that I was going to a 
strange land. When I reached the words, “I will sing 
unto the Lord as long as I live : I will sing praise to my God 
while I have my being,” I uttered them in a fervent whisper. 

My unhappy love never ceased to harrow me. The 
stem image of Matilda blended with the hostile glamour of 
America. 

One of my fellow-passengers was a young Yiddish- 
speaking tailor named Gitelson. He was about twenty-four 
years old, yet his forelock was gray, just his forelock, the 
rest of his hair being a fine, glossy brown. His own cap had 

87 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 


been blown into the sea and the one he had obtained from 
the steerage steward was too small for him, so that gray- 
tuft of his was always out like a plume. We had not been 
acquainted more than a few hours, in fact, for he had been 
seasick throughout the voyage and this was the first day 
he had been up and about. But then I had seen him on 
the day of our sailing and subsequently, many times, as 
he wretchedly lay in his berth. He was literally in tatters. 
He clung to me like a lover, but we spoke very little. Our 
hearts were too full for words. 

As I thus stood at the railing, prayer-book in hand, he 
took a look at the page. The most ignorant “man of the 
earth” among our people can read holy tongue (Hebrew), 
though he may not understand the meaning of the words. 
This was the case with Gitelson. 

“Saying, ‘Bless the Lord, O my soul’?” he asked, rever- 
ently. “Why this chapter of all others?” 

“Because — Why, just listen.” With which I took to 
translating the Hebrew text into Yiddish for him. 

He listened with devout mien. I was not sure that he 
understood it even in his native tongue, but, whether he 
did or not, his beaming, wistful look and the deep sigh he 
emitted indicated that he was in a state similar to mine. 

When I say that my first view of New York Bay struck 
me as something not of this earth it is not a mere figure of 
speech. I vividly recall the feeling, for example, with 
which I greeted the first cat I saw on American soil. It 
was on the Hoboken pier, while the steerage passengers 
were being marched to the ferry. A large, black, well-fed 
feline stood in a comer, eying the crowd of new-comers. 
The sight of it gave me a thrill of joy. “ Look! there is a 
cat!” I said to Gitelson. And in my heart I added, “Just 
like those at home!” For the moment the little animal 
made America real to me. At the same time it seemed 
unreal itself. I was tempted to feel its fur to ascertain 
whether it was actually the kind of creature I took it for. 

We were ferried over to Castle Garden. One of the things 
that caught my eye as I entered the vast rotunda was an 
iron staircase rising diagonally against one of the inner 
walls. A uniformed man, with some papers in his hands, 
ascended it with brisk, resounding step till he disappeared 
through a door not many inches from the ceiling. It 

88 


I DISCOVER AMERICA 

may seem odd, but I can never think of my arrival in this 
country without hearing the ringing footfalls of this 
official and beholding the yellow eyes of the black cat 
which stared at us at the Hoboken pier. 

The harsh manner of the immigration officers was a 
grievous surprise to me. As contrasted with the officials 
of my despotic country, those of a republic had been por- 
trayed in my mind as paragons of refinement and cordiality. 
My anticipations were rudely belied. “They are not a bit 
better than Cossacks,” I remarked to Gitelson. But they 
neither looked nor spoke like Cossacks, so their gruff 
voices were part of the uncanny scheme of things that 
surrounded me. These unfriendly voices flavored all 
America with a spirit of icy inhospitality that sent a chill 
through my very soul. 

The stringent immigration laws that were passed some 
years later had not yet come into existence. We had no 
difficulty in being admitted to the United States, and when 
I was I was loath to leave the Garden. 

Many of the other immigrants were met by relatives, 
friends. There were cries of joy, tears, embraces, kisses. 
All of which intensified my sense of loneliness and dread of 
the New World. The agencies which two Jewish charity 
organizations now maintain at the Immigrant Station had 
not yet been established. Gitelson, who like myself had 
no friends in New York, never left my side. He was 
even more timid than I. It seemed as though he were 
holding on to me for dear life. This had the effect of 
putting me on my mettle. 

“Cheer up, old man!” I said, with bravado. “America 
is not the place to be a ninny in. Come, pull yourself 
together.” 

In truth, I addressed these exhortations as much to 
myself as to him; and so far, at least, as I was concerned, 
my words had the desired effect. 

I led the way out of the big Immigrant Station. As we 
reached the park outside we were pounced down upon by 
two evil-looking men, representatives of boarding-houses for 
immigrants. They pulled us so roughly and their general 
appearance and manner were so uninviting that we strug- 
gled and protested until they let us go — ^not without some 
parting curses. Then I led the way across Battery Park 
7 89 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 

and under the Elevated railway to State Street. A train 
hurtling and panting along overhead produced a bewilder- 
ing, a daunting effect on me. The active life of the great 
strange city made me feel like one abandoned in the midst 
of a jungle. Where were we to go? What were we to do? 
But the presence of Gitelson continued to act as a spur on 
me. I mustered courage to approach a policeman, some- 
thing I should never have been bold enough to do at home. 
As a matter of fact, I scarcely had an idea what his function 
was. To me he looked like some uniformed nobleman — 
an impression that in itself was enough to intimidate me. 
With his coat of blue cloth, starched linen collar, and white 
gloves, he reminded me of anything but the policemen of 
my town. I addressed him in Yiddish, making it as near 
an approach to German as I knew how, but my efforts 
were lost on him. He shook his head. With a witheringly 
dignified grimace he then pointed his club in the direction 
of Broadway and strutted off majestically. 

“He’s not better than a Cossack, either,” was my 
verdict. 

At this moment a voice hailed us in Yiddish. Facing 
about, we beheld a middle-aged man with huge, round, 
perpendicular nostrils and a huge, round, deep dimple in 
his chin that looked like a third nostril. Prosperity was 
written all over his smooth-shaven face and broad-shoul- 
dered, stocky figure. He was literally aglow with diamonds 
and self-satisfaction. But he was unmistakably one of our 
people. It was like coming across a human being in the 
jtmgle. Moreover, his very diamonds somehow told a 
tale of former want, of a time when he had landed, an 
impecunious immigrant like myself; and this made him a 
living source of encouragement to me. 

“God Himself has sent you to us,” I began, acting as the 
spokesman; but he gave no heed to me. His eyes were 
eagerly fixed on Gitelson and his tatters. 

“You’re a tailor, aren’t you?” he questioned him. 

My steerage companion nodded. “I’m a ladies’ tailor, 
but I have worked on men’s clothing, too,” he said. 

“A ladies’ tailor?” the well-dressed stranger echoed, with 
ill-concealed delight. “Very well; come along. I have 
work for you.” 

That he should have been able to read Gitelson’s trade 
90 


I DISCOVER AMERICA 

in his face and figure scarcely surpnsed me. In my native 
place it seemed to be a matter of course that one could tell 
a tailor by his general appearance and walk. Besides, 
had I not divined the occupation of my fellow-passenger 
the moment I saw him on deck? 

As I learned subsequently, the man who accosted us on 
State Street was a cloak contractor, and his presence in the 
neighborhood of Castle Garden was anything but a matter 
of chance. He came there quite often, in fact, his piirpose 
being to angle for cheap labor among the newly arrived 
immigrants. 

We paused near Bowling Green, The contractor and 
my fellow-passenger were absorbed in a conversation full 
of sartorial technicalities which were Greek to me, but 
which brought a gleam of joy into Gitelson’s eye. My 
former companion seemed to have become oblivious of my 
existence. 

As we resumed our walk up Broadway the bejeweled man 
turned to me. 

“And what was your occupation? You have no trade, 
have you?” 

“I read Talmud,” I said, confusedly. 

“I see, but that’s no business in America,” he declared. 
' ‘ Any relatives here ?” 

“No.” 

“Well, don’t worry. You will be all right. If a fellow 
isn’t lazy nor a fool he has no reason to sorry he came 
to America. It ’ll be all right.” 

“All right” he said in English, and I conjectured what it 
meant from the context. In the course of the minute or 
two which he bestowed upon me he uttered it so many 
times that the phrase engraved itself upon my memory. 
It was the first bit of English I ever acquired. 

The well-dressed, trim-looking crowds of lower Broadway 
impressed me as a multitude of counts, barons, princes. I 
was puzzled by their preoccupied faces and hurried step. 
It seemed to comport ill with their baronial dress and 
general high-bom appearance. 

In a vague way all this helped to confirm my conception 
of America as a unique coimtry, unlike the rest of the world. 

When we reached the General Post-Ofiice, at the end 
of the Third Avenue surface line, our guide bade us stop. 

91 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 

“Walk straight ahead/' he said to me, waving his hand 
toward Park Row. “Just keep walking until you see a 
lot of Jewish people. It isn’t far from here.” With which 
he slipped a silver quarter into my hand and made Gitelson 
bid me good-by. 

The two then boarded a big red horse-car. 

I was left with a sickening sense of having been tricked, 
cast off, and abandoned. I stood watching the receding 
public vehicle, as though its scarlet hue were my last gleam 
of hope in the world. When it finally disappeared from 
view my heart sank within me. I may safely say that the 
half-hour that followed is one of the worst I experienced 
in all the thirty-odd years of my life in this country. 

The big, round nostrils of the contractor and the gray 
forelock of my young steerage-fellow haunted my brain as 
hideous S5mibols of treachery. 

With twenty-nine cents in my pocket (four cents was all 
that was left of the sum which I had received from Matilda 
and her mother) I set forth in the direction of East 
Broadway. 


CHAPTER II 


T en minutes’ walk brought me to the heart of the 
Jewish East Side. The streets swarmed with Yiddish- 
speaking immigrants. The sign-boards were in English 
and Yiddish, some of them in Russian. The scurry and 
hustle of the people were not merely overwhelmingly greater, 
both in volume and intensity, than in my native town. 
It was of another sort. The swing and step of the pedes- 
trians, the voices and manner of the street peddlers, and a 
htmdred and one other things seemed to testify to far more 
self-confidence and energy, to larger ambitions and wider 
scopes, than did the appearance of the crowds in my 
birthplace. 

The great thing was that these people were better 
dressed than the inhabitants of my town. The poorest- 
looking man wore a hat (instead of a cap), a stiff collar and 
a necktie, and the poorest woman wore a hat or a bonnet. 

The appearance of a newly arrived immigrant was still 
a novel spectacle on the East Side. Many of the passers-by 
paused to look at me with wistful smiles of curiosity. 
“There goes a green one!” some of them exclaimed. 

The sight of me obviously evoked reminiscences in them 
of the days when they had been “green ones” like myself. 
It was a second birth that they were witnessing, an experi- 
ence which they had once gone through themselves and 
which was one of the greatest events in their lives. 

“Green one” or “greenhorn” is one of the many English 
words and phrases which my mother-tongue has appro- 
priated in England and America. Thanks to the many 
millions of letters that pass annually between the Jews of 
Russia and their relatives in the United States, a number 
of these words have by now come to be generally known 
among our people at home as well as here. In the eighties, 
however, one who had not visited any English-speaking 

93 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 

country was utterly unfamiliar with them. And so I 
had never heard of “peen one” before. Still, ‘‘green,” 
in the sense of color, is Yiddish as well as English, so I 
understood the phrase at once, and as a contemptuous 
quizzical appellation for a newly arrived, inexperienced im- 
migrant it stung me cruelly. As I went along I heard it 
again and again. Some of the passers-by woiild call me 
“greenhorn” in a tone of blighting gaiety, but these were 
an exception. For the most part it was “green one” and 
in a spirit of sympathetic interest. It hurt me, all the same. 
Even those glances that offered me a cordial welcome and 
good wishes had something self-complacent and condescend- 
ing in them. “ Poor fellow ! he is a green one,” these people 
seemed to say. “We are not, of course. We are Amer- 
icanized.” 

For my first meal in the New World I bought a three-cent 
wedge of coarse rye bread, off a huge round loaf, on a stand 
on Essex Street. I was too strict in my religious observ- 
ances to eat it without first performing ablutions and offer- 
ing a brief prayer. So I approached a bewigged old woman 
who stood in the doorway of a small grocery-store to let 
me wash my hands and eat my meal in her place. She 
looked old-fashioned enough, yet when she heard my re- 
quest she said, with a laugh: 

“You’re a green one, I see.” 

“Suppose I am,” I resented. “Do the yellow ones or 
black ones all eat without washing? Can’t a fellow be a 
good Jew in America?” 

“Yes, of course he can, but — ^well, wait till you see for 
yourself.” 

However, she asked me to come in, gave me some water 
and an old apron to serve me for a towel, and when I was 
ready to eat my bread she placed a glass of milk before me, 
explaining that she was not going to charge me for it. 

“In America people are not foolish enough to be content 
with dry bread,” she said, sententiously. 

While I ate she questioned me about my antecedents. 
I remember how she impressed me as a strong, clever woman 
of few words as long as she catechised me, and how disap- 
pointed I was when she began to talk of herself. The 
astute, knowing mien ^adually faded out of her face and 
I had before me a gushing, boastful old bore. 

94 


I DISCOVER AMERICA 

My intention was to take a long stroll, as much in the 
hope of coming upon some windfall as for the purpose of 
taking a look at the great American city. Many of the 
letters that came from the United States to my birthplace 
before I sailed had contained a warning not to imagine that 
America was a “land of gold” and that treasure might be 
had in the streets of New York for the picking. But these 
warnings only had the effect of lending vividness to my 
image of an American street as a thoroughfare strewn 
with nuggets of the precious metal. Symbolically speaking, 
this was the idea one had of the “land of Columbus.” 
It was a continuation of the widespread effect produced by 
stories of Cortes and Pizarro in the sixteenth century, con- 
firmed by the successes of some Russian emigrants of my 
time. 

I asked the grocery-woman to let me leave my bundle 
with her, and, after considerable hesitation, she allowed 
me to put it among some empty barrels in her cellar. 

I went wandering over the Ghetto. Instead of stumbling 
upon nuggets of gold, I found signs of poverty. In one 
place I came across a poor family who — as I learned upon 
inquiry — ^had been dispossessed for non-pa5mient of rent. 
A mother and her two little boys were watching their pile 
of furniture and other household goods on the sidewalk 
while the passers-by were dropping coins into a saucer 
placed on one of the chairs to enable the family to move 
into new quarters. 

What puzzled me was the nature of the furniture. For 
in my birthplace chairs and a couch like those I now saw 
on the sidewalk would be a sign of prosperity. But then 
an3rthing was to be expected of a country where the poorest 
devil wore a hat and a starched collar. 

I walked on. 

The exclamation “A green one” or “A greenhorn” con- 
tinued. If I did not hear it, I saw it in the eyes of the 
people who passed me. 

When it grew dark and I was much in need of rest I had 
a street peddler direct me to a synagogue. I expected 
to spend the night there. What could have been more 
natural? 

At the house of God I found a handful of men in prayer. 

95 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 

It was a large, spacious room and the smallness of their 
number gave it an air of desolation. I joined in the de- 
votions with great fervor. My soul was sobbing to Heaven 
to take care of me in the strange coimtry. 

The service over, several of the worshipers took up some 
Talmud folio or other holy book and proceeded to read 
them aloud in the familiar singsong. The strange sur- 
roundings suddenly began to look like home to me. 

One of the readers, an elderly man with a pinched face 
and forked little beard, paused to look me over. 

“A green one?” he asked, genially. 

He told me that the synagogue was crowded on Satur- 
days, while on week-days people in America had no time to 
say their prayers at home, much less to visit a house of 
worship. 

“It isn’t Russia,” he said, with a sigh. “Judaism has 
not much of a chance here.” 

When he heard that I intended to stay at the synagogue 
overnight he smiled ruefully. 

“ One does not sleep in an American synagogue,” he said. 
“It is not Russia.” Then, scanning me once more, he 
added, with an air of compassionate perplexity: “Where 
will you sleep, poor child? I wish I could take you 
to my house, but — ^well, America is not Russia. There 
is no pity here, no hospitality. My wife would raise 
a rumpus if I brought you along. I should never hear 
the last of it.” 

With a deep sigh and nodding his head plaintively he 
returned to his book, swaying back and forth. But he was 
apparently more interested in the subject he had broached. 
“When we were at home,” he resumed, “she, too, was a 
different woman. She did not make life a burden to me 
as she does here. Have you no money at all?” 

I showed him the quarter I had received from the cloak 
contractor. 

“Poor fellow! Is that all you have? There are places 
where you can get a night’s lodging for fifteen cents, but 
what are you going to do afterward? I am simply ashamed 
of myself.” 

“ ‘ Hospitality,’ ” he quoted from the Talmud, “ ‘ is one of 
the things which the giver enjoys in this world and the 
fruit of which he relishes in the world to come.’ To think 

96 


I DISCOVER AMERICA 

that I cannot offer a Talmudic scholar a night’s rest! 
Alas! America has turned me into a mound of ashes.” 

‘‘You were well off in Russia, weren’t you?” I in- 
quired, in astonishment. For, indeed, I had never heard 
of any but poor people emigrating to America. 

‘‘I used to spend my time reading Talmud at the syna- 
gogue,” was his reply. 

Many of his answers seemed to fit, not the question 
asked, but one which was expected to follow it. You 
might have thought him anxious to forestall your next 
query in order to save time and words, had it not been so 
difficult for him to keep his mouth shut. 

‘‘She,” he said, referring to his wife, ‘‘had a nice little 
business. She sold feed for horses and she rejoiced in 
the thought that she was married to a man of learning. 
True, she has a tongue. That she always had, but over 
there it was not so bad. She has become a different woman 
here. Alas! America is a topsy-tiuvy country.” 

He went on to show how the New World turned things 
upside down, transforming an immigrant shoemaker into 
a man of substance, while a former man of leisure was 
forced to work in a factory here. In like manner, his wife 
had changed for the worse, for, lo and behold! instead of 
supporting him while he read Talmud, as she used to do at 
home, she persisted in sending him out to peddle. ‘‘Amer- 
ica is not Russia,” she said. ‘‘A man must make a living 
here.” But, alas! it was too late to begin now! He had 
spent the better part of his life at his holy books and was 
fit for nothing else now. His wife, however, would take no 
excuse. He must peddle or be nagged to death. And if 
he ventured to slip into some synagogue of an afternoon 
and read a page or two he would be in danger of being caught 
red-handed, so to say, for, . indeed, she often shadowed 
him to make sure that he did not play truant. Alas! 
America was not Russia. 

A thought crossed my mind that if Reb Sender were here, 
he, too, might have to go peddling. Poor Reb Sender! 
The very image of him with a basket on his arm broke my 
heart. America did seem to be the most cruel place on 
earth. 

‘‘I am telling you all this that you may see why I can’t 
invite you to my house,” explained the peddler. 

97 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 

All I did see was that the poor man could not help 
unburdening his mind to the first listener that presented 
himself. 

He pursued his tale of woe. He went on complaining of 
his own fate, quite forgetful of mine. Instead of continuing 
to listen, I fell to gazing around the synagogue more or less 
fmtively. One of the readers attracted my special atten- 
tion. He was a venerable-looking man with a face which, 
as I now recall it, reminds me of Thackeray. Only he had 
a finer head than the English novelist. 

At last the henpecked man discovered my inattention 
and fell silent. A minute later his tongue was at work 
again. 

“You are looking at that man over there, aren’t you?” 
he asked. 

“Who is he?” 

“When the Lord of the World gives one good luck he gives 
one good looks as well.” 

“Why, is he rich?” 

“His son-in-law is, but then his daughter cherishes him 
as she does the apple of her eye, and — well, when the Lord 
of the World wishes to give a man happiness he gives him 
good children, don’t you know.” 

He rattled on, betra5dng his envy of the venerable- 
looking man in various ways and telling me all he knew 
about him — that he was a widower named Even, that 
he had been some years in America, and that his daughter 
furnished him all the money he needed and a good deal 
more, so that “he lived like a monarch.” Even would 
not live in his daughter’s house, however, because her 
kitchen was not conducted according to the laws of Moses, 
and everything else in it was too modem. So he roomed 
and boarded with pious strangers, visiting her far less 
frequently than she visited him and never eating at her 
table. 

“He is a very proud man,” my informant said. “One 
must not approach him otherwise than on tiptoe.” 

I threw a glance at Even. His dignified singsong seemed 
to confirm my interlocutor’s characterization of him. 

“Perhaps you will ask me how his son-in-law takes it 
all?” the voluble Talmudist went on. “Well, his daughter 
is a beautiful woman and well favored.” The implication 

98 


I DISCOVER AMERICA 


was that her husband was extremely fond of her and let 
her use his money freely. “ They are awfully rich and they 
live like veritable Gentiles, which is a common disease 
among the Jews of America. But then she observes the 
commandment, ‘Honor thy father.’ That she does.” 

Again he tried to read his book and again the temptation 
to gossip was too much for him. He returned to Even’s 
pride, dwelling with considerable venom upon his love of 
approbation and vanity. ” May the Uppermost not punish 
me for my evil words, but to see him take his roll of bills 
out of his pocket and pay his contribution to the synagogue 
one would think he was some big merchant and not a poor 
devil sponging on his son-in-law.” 

A few minutes later he told me admiringly how Even 
often “loaned” him a half-dollar to enable him to do some 
reading at the house of God. 

“I tell my virago of a wife I have sold fifty cents’ worth 
of goods,” he explained to me, sadly. 

After a while the man with the Thackeray face closed 
his book, kissed it, and rose to go. On his way out he un- 
ceremoniously paused in front of me, a silver snuff-box in 
his left hand, and fell to scrutinizing me. He had the ap- 
pearance of a well-paid rabbi of a large, prosperous town. 
“ He is going to say, ‘A green one,’ ” I prophesied to myself, 
all but shuddering at the prospect. And, sure enough, he 
did, but he took his time about it, which made the next 
minute seem a year to me. He took snuff with tantalizing 
deliberation. Next he sneezed with great zest and then he 
restuned sizing me up. The suspense was insupportable. 
Another second and I might have burst out, “For mercy’s 
sake say ‘A green one,’ and let us be done with it.” But at 
that moment he uttered it of his own accord: 

“A green one, I see. Where from?” And grasping my 
hand he added in Hebrew, “Peace be to ye.” 

His first questions about me were obsequiously answered 
by the man with the forked beard, whereupon my attention 
was attracted by the fact that he addressed him by his Gen- 
tile name — that is, as “Mr. Even,” and not by his Hebrew 
name, as he would have done in our birthplace. Surely 
America did not seem to be much of a God-fearing country. 

When Mr. Even heard of my Talmud studies he ques- 
tioned me about the tractates I had recently read and even 

99 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 

challenged me to explain an apparent discrepancy in a 
certain passage, for the double purpose of testing my 
“Talmud brains” and flaunting his own. I acquitted 
myself creditably, it seemed, and I felt that I was making a 
good impression personally as well. Anyhow, he invited me 
to supper in a restaurant. 

On our way there I told him of my mother’s violent 
death, vaguely hoping that it would add to his interest in 
me. It did — even more than I had expected. To my 
pleasant surprise, he proved to be familiar with the incident. 
It appeared that because our section lay far outside the 
region of pogroms, or anti-Jewish riots, the killing of my 
mother by a Gentile mob had attracted considerable at- 
tention. I was thrilled to find myself in the lime-light of 
world-wide publicity. I almost felt like a hero. 

“So you are her son?” he said, pausing to look me over, 
as though I had suddenly become a new man. “ My poor 
orphan boy!” 

He caused me to recount the incident in every detail. 
In doing so I made it as appallingly vivid as I knew how. 
He was so absorbed and moved that he repeatedly made me 
stop in the middle of the sidewalk so as to look me in the 
face as he listened. 

“Oh, but you must be hungry,” he suddenly interrupted 
me. “Come on.” 

Arrived at the restaurant, he ordered supper for me. 
Then he withdrew, commending me to the care of the 
proprietress until he should return. 

He had no sooner shut the door behind him than she 
took to questioning me: Was I a relative of Mr. Even? 
If not, then why was he taking so much interest in me? 
She was a vivacious, well-fed young matron with cheeks 
of a flaming red and with the consciousness of business 
success all but spurting from her black eyes. From what 
she, assisted by one of the other customers present, told 
me about my benefactor I learned that his son-in-law was 
the owner of the tenement-house in which the restaurant 
was located, as well as of several other buildings. They 
also told me of the landlord’s wife, of her devotion to her 
father, and of the latter’s piety and dignity. It appeared, 
however, that in her filial reverence she would draw the line 
upon his desire not to spare the rod upon her children, 

lOO 


I dVsCOVER AMERICA 

which was really the chief reason why he was a stranger at 
her house. 

I had been waiting about two hours and was growing 
uneasy, when Mr. Even came back, explaining that he had 
spent the time taking his own supper and finding lodgings 
for me. 

He then took me to store after store, buying me a suit 
of clothes, a hat, some underclothes, handkerchiefs (the first 
white handkerchiefs I ever possessed), collars, shoes, and 
a necktie. 

He spent a considerable sum on me. As we passed from 
block to block he kept saying, “Now you won’t look 
green,” or, “That will make you look American.” At 
one point he added, “Not that you are a bad-looking 
fellow as it is, but then one must be presentable in America.” 
At this he quoted from the Talmud an equivalent to the 
saying that one must do in Rome as the Romans do. 

When all our purchases had been made he took me to a 
barber shop with bathrooms in the rear. 

“Give him a hair-cut and a bath,” he said to the pro- 
prietor. “ Cut off his side-locks while you are at it. One 
may go without them and yet be a good Jew.” 

He disappeared again, but when I emerged from the 
bathroom I found him waiting for me. I stood before him, 
necktie and collar in hand, not knowing what to do with 
them, till he showed me how to put them on. 

“Don’t worry, David,” he consoled me. “When I came 
here I, too, had to learn these things.” When he was 
through with the job he took me in front of a looking-glass. 
“Quite an American, isn’t he?” he said to the barber, 
be^ingly. “And a good-looking fellow, too.” 

When I took a look at the mirror I was bewildered. I 
scarcely recognized myself. 

I was mentally parading my “modem” make-up before 
Matilda. A pang of yearning clutched my heart. It was 
a momentary feeling. For the rest, I was all in a flutter 
with embarrassment and a novel relish of existence. It 
was as though the hair-cut and the American clothes had 
changed my identity. The steamer, Gitelson, and the man 
who had snatched him up now appeared to be something 
of the remote past. The day had been so crowded with 
novel impressions that it seemed an age. 

lOI 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 

He took me to an apartment in a poor tenement-house 
and introduced me to a tall, bewhiskered, morose-looking, 
elderly man and a smiling woman of thirty-five, explaining 
that he had paid them in advance for a month’s board and 
lodging. When he said, “This is Mr. Levinsky,’’ I felt 
as though I was being promoted in rank as behooved my 
new appearance. “Mister” struck me as something like 
a title of nobility. It thrilled me. But somehow it 
seemed ridiculous, too. Indeed, it was some time before 
I could think of myself as a “Mister” without being 
tempted to laugh. 

“And here is some cash for you,” he said, handing me a 
five-dollar bill, and some silver, in addition. “And now 
you must shift for yourself. That’s all I can do for you. 
Nor, indeed, would I do more if I could. A yoimg man like 
you must learn to stand on his own legs. Understand? 
If you do well, come to see me. Understand?” 

There was an eloquent pause which said that if I did 
not do well I was not to molest him. Then he added, aloud : 

“There is only one thing I want you to promise me. 
Don’t neglect your religion nor your Talmud. Do you 
promise that, David?” 

I did. There was a note of fatherly tenderness m the 
way this utter stranger called me David. It reminded 
me of Reb Sender. I wanted to say something to express 
my gratitude, but I felt a lump in my throat. 

He advised me to invest the five dollars in dry-goods and 
to take up peddling. Then, wishing me good luck, he left. 

My landlady, who had listened to Mr. Even’s parting 
words with pious nods and rapturous grins, remarked that 
one would vainly search the world for another man like 
him, and proceeded to make my bed on a lotmge. 

The room was a kitchen. The stove was a puzzle to me. 
I wondered whether it was really a stove. 

“Is this used for heating?” I inquired. 

‘‘Yes, for heating and cooking,” she explained, with 
smiling cordiality. And she added, with infinite superiority, 
“America has no use for those big tile ovens.” 

When I found myself alone in the room the feeling of 
desolation and uncertainty which had tormented me all 
day seized me once again. 

I went to bed and began to say my bed-prayer. I did 
102 


I DISCOVER AMERICA 


so mechanically. My mind did not attend to the words 
I was murmuring. Instead, it was saying to God: “Lord 
of the Universe, you have been good to me so far. I 
went out of that grocery-store in the hope of coming 
upon some good piece of luck and my hope was realized. 
Be good to me in the future as well. I shall be more pious 
than ever, I promise you, even if America is a godless 
country.” 

I was excruciatingly homesick. My heart went out to 
my poor dead mother. Then I reflected that it was my 
story of her death that had led Even to spend so much 
money on me. It seemed as if she were taking care .of me 
from her grave. It seemed, too, as though she had died 
so that I might arouse sympathy and make a good start in 
America. I thought of her and of all Antomir, and my 
pangs of yearning for her were tinged with pangs of my 
unrequited love for Matilda. 


CHAPTER III 


M y landlady was a robust little woman, compact and 
mobile as a billiard-ball, continually bustling about, 
chattering and smiling or laughing. She was a good- 
natured, silly creature, and her smile, which automati- 
cally shut her eyes and opened her mouth from ear to ear, 
accentuated her kindliness as well as her lack of sense. 
When she did not talk she would hum or sing at the top of 
her absiud voice the then popular American song “ Climbing 
Up the Golden Stairs.” She told me the very next day 
that she had been married less than a year, and one of the 
first things I noticed about her was the pleasure it gave 
her to refer to her husband or to quote him. Her prattle 
was so full of, “ My husband says, says my husband,” that 
it seemed as though the chief purpose of her jabber was to 
parade her married state and to hear herself talk of her 
spouse. The words, “My husband,” were music to her 
ears. They actually meant, “Behold, I am an old maid 
no longer!” 

She was so deeply impressed by the story of my meeting 
with Mr. Even, whose son-in-law was her landlord, and 
by the amount he had spent on me that she retailed it 
among her neighbors, some of whom she invited to the 
house in order to exhibit me to them. 

Her name was Mrs. Dienstog, which is Yiddish for 
Tuesday. Now Tuesday is a lucky day, so I saw a good 
omen in her, and thanked God her name was not Monday 
or Wednesday, which, according to the Talmud, are 
unlucky. 

One of the first things I did was to make up a list of the 
English words and phrases which our people in this country 
had adopted as part and parcel of their native tongue. 
This, I felt, was an essential step toward shedding one’s 
“greenhomhood,” an operation every immigrant is anxious 

104 


I DISCOVER AMERICA 

to dispose of without delay. The list included, “floor,” 
“ceiling,” “window,” “dinner,” “supper,” “hat,” “busi- 
ness,” “job,” “clean,” “plenty,” “never,” “ready,” “any- 
how,” “never mind,” “hurry up,” “all right,” and about 
a hundred other words and phrases. 

I was quick to realize that to be “stylishly” dressed 
was a good investment, but I realized, too, that to use the 
Yiddish word for “collar” or “clean” instead of their 
English correlatives was worse than to wear a dirty collar. 

I wrote down the English words in Hebrew characters 
and from my landlady’s dictation, so that “never mind,” 
for example, became “nevermine.” 

When I came home with a basket containing my first 
stock of wares, Mrs. Dienstog ran into ecstasies over it. 
She took to fingering some of my collar-buttons and garters, 
and when I protested she drew away, pouting. 

Still, the next morning, as I was leaving the house with 
my stock, she wished me good luck ardently; and when I 
left the house she ran sSter me, shouting: “Wait, Mr. 
Levinsky. I’ll buy something of you ‘for a lucky start.’” 
She picked out a paper of pins, and as she paid me the 
price she said, devoutly, “May this little basket become 
one of the biggest stores in New York.” 

My plan of campaign was to peddle in the streets for a 
few weeks — ^that is, imtil my “greenness” should wear off — 
and then to try to sell goods to tenement housewives. 
I threw myself .into the business with enthusiasm, but with 
rather discouraging results. I earned what I then called 
a living, but made no headway. As a consequence, my 
ardor cooled off. It was nothing but a daily grind. My 
heart was not in it. My landlord, who was a truck-driver, 
but who dreamed of business, thought that I lacked dash, 
pluck, tenacity; and the proprietor of the “peddler supply 
store” in which I bought my goods seemed to be of the 
same opinion, for he often chaffed me on the smallness of 
my bill. On one occasion he said : 

“If you want to make a decent living you must put all 
other thoughts out of your mind and think of nothing but 
your business.” 

Only my smiling little landlady was always chirping 
words of encouragement, assuring me that I was not doing 
worse than the average beginner. This and her cordial, 

8 105 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 


good-natured manner were a source of comfort to me. 
We became great friends. She taught me some of her 
broken English; and I let her talk of her husband as long 
as she wanted. One of her weaknesses was to boast of 
holding him under her thumb, though in reality she was 
under his. Ceaselessly gay in his absence, she would be- 
come shy and reticent the moment he came home. I 
never saw him talk to her save to give her some order, 
which she would execute with feverish haste. Still, in his 
surly, domineering way he was devoted to her. 

I was ever conscious of my modem garb, and as I walked 
through the streets I would repeatedly throw glances at 
store windows, trying to catch my reflection in them. Or 
else I would pass my fingers across my temples to feel the 
absence of my side-locks. It seemed a pity that Matilda 
could not see me now. 

One of the trifles that have remained embedded in my 
memory from those days is the image of a big, florid-faced 
huckster shouting at the top of his husky voice : 

“ Strawberri-i-ies, strawberri-i-ies, five cents a quart 

I used to hear and see him every morning through the 
windows of my lodging; and to this day, whenever I hear 
the singsong of a strawberry-peddler I scent the odors of 
New York as they stmck me upon my arrival, in 1885, and 
I experience the feeling of uncertainty, homesickness, and 
lovesickness that never left my heart at that period. 

I often saw Antomir in my dreams. 

The immigrants from the various Russian, Galician, or 
Roumanian towns usually have their respective synagogues 
in New York, Philadelphia, Boston, or Chicago. & I 
sought out the house of worship of the Sons of Antomir. 

There were scores, perhaps hundreds, of small congre- 
gations on the East Side, each of which had the use of a 
single room, for the service hours on Saturdays and holi- 
days, in a building rented for all sorts of gatherings — wed- 
dings, dances, lodge meetings, trade-union meetings, and 
the like. The Antomir congregation, however, was one of 
those that could afford a whole house all to themselves. 
Our synagogue was a small, rickety, frame structure. 

It was for a Saturday-morning service that I visited it 
for the first time. I entered it with throbbing heart. I 
prayed with great fervor. When the devotions were over 
106 


I DISCOVER AMERICA 

I was (Hsappointed to find that the congregation contained 
not a single worshiper whom I had known or heard of at 
home. ^ Indeed, many of them did not even belong to 
Antomir. When I told them about my mother there was a 
murmur of curiosity and sympathy, but their interest in me 
soon gave way to their interest in the information I could 
give each of them concerning the house and street that had 
once been his home. 

Upon the advice of my landlord, the truck-driver, and 
largely with his help, I soon changed the character of my 
business. I rented a push-cart and tried to sell remnants of 
dress-goods, linen, and oil-cloth. This turned out some- 
what better than basket peddling; but I was one of the 
common herd in this branch of the business as well. 

Often I would load my push-cart with cheap hosiery, 
collars, brushes, hand-mirrors, note-books, shoe-laces, and 
the like, sometimes with several of these articles at once, 
but more often with one at a time. In the latter case I 
wotdd annoimce to the passers-by the glad news that I had 
struck a miraculous bargain at a wholesale bankruptcy sale, 
for instance, and exhort them not to miss their golden 
opportimity. I also learned to crumple up new tmder- 
wear, or even to wet it somewhat, and then shout that I 
could sell it “so cheap” because it was slightly damaged. 

I earned enough to pay my board, but I developed neither 
vim nor ardor for the occupation. I hankered after in- 
tellectual interest and was unceasingly homesick. I was 
greatly tempted to call on Mr. Even, but deferred the visit 
until I should make a better showing. 

I hated the constant chase and scramble for bargains 
and I hated to yell and scream in order to create a demand 
for my wares by the sheer force of my lungs. Many an 
illiterate dolt easily outshouted me and thus dampened 
what little interest I had mustered. One fellow in par- 
ticular was a source of discouragement to me. He was a 
half-witted, hideous-looking man, with no end of vocal 
energy and senseless fervor. He was a veritable engine of 
imbecile vitality. He would make the street ring with 
deafening shrieks, working his arms and head, sputtering 
and foaming at the mouth like a madman. And it pro- 
duced results. His nervous fit would have a peculiar effect 

107 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 

on the pedestrians. One could not help pausing and buying 
something of him. The block where we usually did busi- 
ness was one of the best, but I hated him so violently that I 
finally moved my push-cart to a less desirable locality. 

I came home in despair. 

“Oh, it takes a blockhead to make a success of it,” 
I complained to Mrs. Dienstog. 

“Why, why,” she consoled me, “it is a sin to be 
gnunbling like that. There are lots of peddlers who have 
been years in America and who would be glad to earn as 
much as you do. It 11 be all right. Don’t worry, Mr. 
Levinsky.” 

It was less than a fortnight before I changed my place 
of business once again. The only thing by which these few 
days became fixed in my memory was the teeth of a young 
man named Volodsky and the peculiar tale of woe he told 
me. He was a homely, commonplace-looking man, but 
his teeth were so beautiful that their glistening whiteness 
irritated me somewhat. They were his own natural teeth, 
but I thought them out of place amid his plain features, or 
amid the features of any other man, for that matter. They 
seemed to be more suited to the face of a woman. His 
push-cart was next to mine, but he sold — or tried to sell — 
hardware, while my cart was laden with other goods; and 
as he was, moreover, as much of a failime as I was, there 
was no reason why we should not be friends. So we would 
spend the day in heart-to-heart talks of our hard luck and 
homesickness. His chief worry was over the “dower 
money” which he had borrowed of his sister, at home, to 
pay for his passage. 

“She gave it to me cheerfully,” he said, in a brooding, 
listless way. “ She thought I would send it back to her at 
once. People over there think treasure can really be had 
for the picking in America. Well, I have been over two 
years here, and have not been able to send her a cent. Her 
letters make holes in my heart. She has a good marriage 
chance, so she says, and unless I send her the money at 
once it will be off. Her lamentations will drive me into 
the grave.” 


CHAPTER IV 


1 S00N had to move from the Dienstogs* to make room 
for a relative of the truck-driver’s who had arrived from 
England. My second lodgings were an exact copy of my 
first, a lounge in a kitchen serving me as a bed. To add 
to the similarity, my new landlady was incessantly singing. 
Only she had three children and her songs were all in 
Yiddish. Her ordinary speech teemed with oaths like: 
“Strike me blind,” “May I not be able to move my arms 
or my legs,” “May I spend every cent of it on doctor’s 
bills,” “May I not be able to get up from this chair.” 

A great many of our women will spice their Yiddish with 
this find of imprecations, but she was far above the average 
in this respect. 

The curious thing about her was that her name was 
Mrs. Levinsky, though we were not related in the remotest 
degree. 

Whatever enthusiasm there was in me foimd vent in 
religion. I spent many an evening at the Antomir Syna- 
gogue, reading Talmud passionately. This would bring 
my heart in touch with my old home, with dear old Reb 
Sender, with the grave of my poor mother. It was the 
only pleasure I had in those days, and it seemed to be 
the highest I had ever enjoyed. At times I would feel the 
tears coming to my eyes for the sheer joy of hearing my 
own singsong, my old Antomir singsong. It was like an 
echo from the Preacher’s Synago^e. My former self was 
addressing me across the sea in this strange, iminviting, big 
town where I was compelled to peddle shoe-black or oil- 
cloth and to compete with a yelling idiot. I would picture 
my mother gazing at me as I stood at my push-cart. I 
could almost see her slapping her hands in despair. 

As for my love, it had settled down to a chronic dull 
pain that asserted itself on special occasions only. 

109 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 

I was so homesick that my former lodging in New York, 
to which I had become used, now seemed like home by 
comparison. I missed the Dienstogs keenly, and I visited 
them quite often. 

I wrote long, passionate letters to Reb Sender, in a con- 
glomeration of the Talmudic jargon, bad Hebrew, and go<^ 
Yiddish, referring to the Talmud studies I pursued in 
America and pouring out my forlorn heart to him. His 
affectionate answers brought me inexpressible happiness. 

But many of the other peddlers made fun of my piety 
and it could not last long. Moreover, I was in contact 
with life now, and the daily surprises it had in store for me 
dealt my former ideas of the world blow after blow. I saw 
the cunning and the meanness of some of my customers, of 
the tradespeople of whom I bought my wares, and of the 
peddlers who did business by my side. Nor was I unaware 
of certain unlovable traits that were unavoidably develop- 
ing in my own self under these influences. And while hu- 
man nature was thus growing smaller, the human world 
as a whole was growing larger, more complex, more heart- 
less, and more interesting. The striking thing was that 
it was not a world of piety. I spoke to scores of people and 
I saw tens of thousands. Very few of the women who 
passed my push-cart wore wigs, and men who did not shave 
were an exception. Also, I knew that many of the people 
with whom I came in daily contact openly patronized Gen- 
tile restaurants and would not hesitate even to eat pork. 

The orthodox Jewish faith, as it is followed in the old 
Ghetto towns of Russia or Austria, has still to learn the art 
of trimming its sails to suit new winds. It is exactly the 
same as it was a thousand years ago. It does not attempt 
to adopt itself to modem conditions as the Christian Church 
is continually doing. It is absolutely inflexible. If you 
are a Jew of the type to which I belonged when I came to 
New York and you attempt to bend your religion to the 
spirit of your new surroundings, it breaks. It falls to 
pieces. The very clothes I wore and the very food I ate 
had a fatal effect on my religious habits. A whole book 
could be written on the influence of a starched collar and a 
necktie on a man who was brought up as I was. It was 
inevitable that, sooner or later, I should let a barber shave 
my sprouting beard. 


no 


/ 

V 


I I DISCOVER AMERICA 

“What do you want those things for?” Mrs. Levinsky 
once said to me, pointing at my nascent whiskers. “Oh, 
go take a shave and don’t be a fool. It will make you ever 
so much better-looking. May my luck be as handsome as 
your face will then be.” 

“Never!” I retorted, testily, yet blushing. 

She gave a sarcastic snort. “ They all speak like that at 
the beginning,” she said. “The girls will make you shave 
if nobody else does.” 

“ What girls?” I asked, with a scowl, but blushing once 
again. 

“What do I know what girls?” she laughed. “That’s 
your own lookout, not mine.” 

I did not like her. She was provokingly crafty and cold, 
and she had a mean smile and a dishonest voice that often 
irritated me. She was ruddy-faced and bursting with 
health, taller than Mrs. Dienstog, yet too short for her 
great breadth of shoulder and the enormous bulk of her 
bust. I thought she looked absurdly dumpy. What I 
particularly hated in her was her laughter, which sounded 
for all the world like the gobble of a turkey. 

She was constantly importiming me to get her another 
lodger who would share her kitchen lounge with me. 

“ Rent is so high, I am losing money on you. May I have 
a year of darkness if I am not,” she would din in my ears. 

She was intolerable to me, but I liked her cooking and I 
hated to be moving again, so I remained several months in 
her house. 

It was not long before her prediction as to the fate of my 
beard came true. I took a shave. What actually decided 
me to commit so heinous a sin was a remark dropped by 
one of the peddlers that my down-covered face m^e me 
look like a “green one.” It was the most cruel thing he 
could have told me. I took a look at myself as soon as I 
could get near a mirror, and the next day I received my 
first shave. “Wliat would Reb Sender say?” I thought. 
When I came home that evening I was extremely ill 
at ease. Mrs. Levinsky noticed the change at once, but 
she also noticed my embarrassment, so she said nothing, 
but she was continually darting furtive glances at me, and 
when our eyes met she seemed to be on the verge of bursting 
into one of her turkey laughs. I could have murdered her. 

Ill 



BOOK VI 

A GREENHORN NO LONGER 


« 


CHAPTER I 


I BOUGHT my goods in several places and made the 
acquaintance of many peddlers. One of these at- 
tracted my attention by his popularity among the other 
men and by his peculiar talks of women. His name was 
Max Margolis. We used to speak of him as Big Max to 
distinguish him from a Little Max, till one day a peddler 
who was a good chess-player and was then studying 
algebra changed the two names to “Maximum Max" 
and “Minimum Max," which the other peddlers paro- 
nounced “Maxie Max" and “Minnie Max." 

Some of the other fellows, too, were addicted to obscene 
story-telling, but these mostly made (or pretended to 
make) a joke of it. The man who had changed Max’s 
sobriquet, for instance, never tired of composing smutty 
puns, while another man, who had a married daughter, was 
continually hinting, with meny bravado, at his illicit 
successes with Gentile women. Maximum Max, on the 
other hand, would treat his lascivious topics with peculiar 
earnestness, and even with something like sadness, as 
though he dwelt on them- in spite of himself, under the 
stress of an obsession. 

Otherwise he was a jovial fellow. 

He was a tall, large-boned man, loosely built. His lips 
were always moist and when closed they were never in 
tight contact. He had the reputation of a liar, and, as is 
often the case with those who suffer from that weakness, 
people liked him. Nor, indeed, were his fibs, as a rule, 
made out of whole cloth. They usually had a basis of 
truth. When he told a story and he felt that it was pro- 
ducing no effect he would "play it up," as newspapermen 
would put it, often quite ^tesquely. Altogether he was 
so inclined to overemphasize and embellish his facts that 
it was not always easy to say where <truth ended and fiction 

115 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 


began. Somehow it seemed to me as though the moistness 
and looseness of his lips had something to do with his 
mendacity. 

He was an ignorant man, barely able to write down an 
address. 

Max was an instalment peddler, his chief business being 
with frequenters of dance-halls, to whom he sold clothing, 
dress-goods, jewelry, and — ^when there was a marriage 
among them — furniture. Many a young housewife who 
had met her predestined one” in one of these halls wore a 
marriage ring, and had her front room furnished with a 
“parlor set,” bought of Max Margolis. He was as popular 
among the dancers as he was among the men he met at the 
stores. He was married. Max, yet it was as much by his 
interest in the dancers as by his business interest that he 
was drawn to the dance-halls. He took a fancy to me and 
he often made me listen to his discourses on women. 

The youngest married man usually appealed to me as 
being old enough to be my father, and as Maximum Max 
was not only married, but eleven years my senior, there 
seemed to be a great chasm between us. That he should 
hold this kind of conversations with an unmarried young- 
ster like myself struck me as something xmnatural, doubly 
indecent. As I listened I would feel awkward, but would 
listen, nevertheless. 

One day he looked me over, much as an expert in horse- 
flesh would a colt, and said, with the utmost seriousness: 

“Do you know, Levinsky, you have an awfully fine 
figure. You are a good-loolang chap all around, for that 
matter. A fellow like you ought to make a hit with women. 
Why don’t you learn to dance?” 

The compliment made me wince and blush. Perhaps, 
if he had put it in the form of a jest I should even have 
liked it. As it was, I felt like one stripped in public. Still, 
I recalled with pleasure that Matilda had said similar things 
about my figure. 

“Why don’t you learn to dance, Levinsky?” he repeated. 

I laughed, waving the suggestion aside as a joke. 

On another occasion he said, “ Every woman can be won, 
absolutely every one, provided a fellow knows how to go 
about it.” 

As he proceeded b develop his theory he described 

ii6 


A GREENHORN NO LONGER 

various types of women and the various methods to be 
used with them. 

“Of course, the man must not be repulsive to her,” he 
said. 

That evening, when Mrs. Levinsky’s husband, their 
three children, and myself sat around the table and she was 
serving us our supper she appeared in a new light to me. 
She was nearly twice my age and I hated her not only for 
her meanness and low cimning, but also for her massive, 
broad-shouldered figure and for her turkey laugh, but she 
was a full-blooded, healthy female, after all. So, as I 
looked at her bustling between the table and the stove. 
Max’s rule came back to me. I could almost hear his 
voice, “Every woman can be won, absolutely every one.” 
Mrs. Levinsky’s oldest child was a yoimg man of nearly 
my age, yet I looked her over lustfully and when I found 
that her florid skin was almost spotless, her lips fresh, and 
her black hair without a hint of gray, I was glad. Pres- 
ently, while removing my plate, she threw the trembling 
bulk of her great, firm bust under my very eyes. I felt 
disturbed. “Some morning when we are alone,” I said to 
myself, “ I shall kiss those red lips of hers.” 

From that moment on she was my quarry. 

As her husband worked in a sweatshop, while I peddled, 
he usually got up at least an hour before me. And it was 
considered perfectly natural that Mrs. Levinsky shotild be 
hovering about the kitchen while I was sleeping or lying 
awake on the kitchen loimge. Also, that after her husband 
left for the day I should go aroimd half-naked, washing and 
dressing myself, in the same crowded little room in which 
she was then doing her work, as scantily clad as I was 
and with the sleeves of her flimsy blouse rolled up to her 
armpits. I had never noticed these things before, but on 
the morning following the above supper I did. As I 
opened my eyes and saw her bare, fleshy arms held out 
toward the little kerosene-stove I thought of my resolve to 
kiss her. 

She was htuuming something in a very low voice. To 
let her know that I was awake I stretched myself and 
yawned audibly. Her voice rose. It was a song from a 
well-known Jewish play she was singing. 

“Good morning, Mrs. Lerinskv,” I greeted her, in a 
117 ^ 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 

familiar tone which she now heard for the first time from 
me. “You seem to be in good spirits this morning.” 

She was evidently taken aback. I was the last man in the 
world she would have expected to address a remark of this 
kind to her. 

“How can you see it?” she asked, with a side-glance at 
me. 

“ Have I no ears? Don’t I hear your beautiful singing?” 

“Beautiful singing!” she said, without looking at me. 

After a considerable pause I said, awkwardly, “You 
know, Mrs. Levinsky, I dreamed of you last night!” 

“Did you?” 

“Aren’t you interested to know something more about 
it?” 

“No.” 

“I dreamed of telling you that you are a good-looking 
lady,” I pursued, with fast-beating heart. 

“What has got into that fellow?” she asked of the 
kerosene-stove. “He is a greenhorn no longer, as true as 
I am alive.” 

“You won’t deny you are good-looking, will you?” 

“What is that to you?” And again addressing herself 
to the kerosene-stove: “What do you think of that fellow? 
A pious Tahnudist indeed! Strike me blind if I ever saw 
one like that.” And she uttered a gobble-like chuckle. 

I saw encouragement in her manner. I went on to talk 
of her songs and the Jewish theater, a topic for which I 
knew her to have a singular weakness. The upshot was 
that I soon had her telling me of a play she had recently 
seen. As she spoke, it was inevitable that she should 
come up close to the lounge. As she did so, her fingers 
touched my quilt, her bare, sturdy arms paralyzing my 
attention. The temptation to grasp them was tightening 
its grip on me. I decided to begin by taking hold of her 
hand. I warned myself that it must be done gently, with 
romance in my touch. “I shall just caress her hand,” I 
decided, not hearing a word of what she was saying. 

I brought my hand close to hers. My heart beat 
violently. I was just about to touch her fingers, but T 
let the opportxinity pass. I turned the conversation on her 
husband, on his devotion to her, on their wedding. She 
mocked my question^ jbut answered them all the same. 


A GREENHORN NO LONGER 

“He must have been awfully in love with you/' I 
said. 

“What business is that of yours? Where did you learn 
to ask such questions? At the synagogue? Of course he 
loved me! What would you have? That he should have 
hated me? Why did he marry me, then? Of com*se he 
was in love with me! Else I would not have married him, 
would I? Are you satisfied now?" She boasted of the 
rich and well-connected suitors she had rejected. 

I felt that I had side-tracked my flirtation. Touching 
her hand would have been out of place now. 

A few minutes later, when I was saying my morning 
prayers, I carefully kept my eyes away from her lest I 
should meet her sneering glance. 

When I had finished my devotions and had put my 
phylacteries into their little bag I sat down to breakfast. 
“I don’t like this woman at all,” I said to myself, looking 
at her. “In fact, I abhor her. Why, then, am I so crazy 
to carry on with her?” It was the same question that I 
had once asked myself concerning my contradictory feelings 
for Red Esther, but my knowledge of life had grown con- 
siderably since then. 

In those days I had made the discov^ that there were 
“kisses prompted by affection and kisses prompted by 
Satan.” I now added that even love of the flesh might be 
of two distinct kinds: “There is love of body and soul, and 
there is a kind of love that is of the body only,” I theorized. 
“There is love and there is lust.” 

I thought of my feeling for Matilda. That certainly was 
love. 

Various details of my relations with Matilda came back 
to me during these days. 

One afternoon, as I was brooding over these recollections, 
while passively awaiting customers at my cart, I con- 
jured up that night scene when she sat on the great green 
sofa and I went into ecstasies speaking of my prospective 
studies for admission to a Russian university. I recalled 
how she had been irritated with me for talking too loud 
and how, calling me “Talmud student,” or ninny, she had 
abruptly left the room. I had thought of the scene a 
hundred times before, but now a new interpretation of it 
flashed through my mind. It all s^fened so obvious. I 
119 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 

certainly had been a ninny, an idiot. I burst into a sar- 
castic titter at Matilda’s expense and my own. 

‘‘Of course I was a ninny,” I scoffed at myself again and 
again. 

I saw Matilda from a new angle. It was as if she had 
suddenly slipped off her pedestal. Instead of lamenting my 
fallen idol, however, I gloated over her fall. And, instead 
of growing cold to her, I felt that she was nearer to me 
than ever, nearer and dearer. 


CHAPTER II 


NE morning, after breakfast, when I was about to 



leave the house and Mrs. Levinsky was detaining me, 
trying to exact a promise that I should get somebody to 
share the lounge with me, I said : 

“I’ll see about it. I must be going. Good-by!” At 
this I took her hand, ostensibly in farewell. 

“Good-by,” she said, coloring and trying to free her- 
self. 

“Good-by,” I repeated, shaking her hand gently and 
smiling upon her. 

She wrenched out her hand. I took hold of her chin, 
but she shook it free. 

“Don’t,” she said, shyly, turning away. 

“What’s the matter?” I said, gaily. 

She faced about again . “ I ’ll tell you what the matter is, ” 

she said. “If you do that again you will have to move. 
If you think I am one of those landladies— you know the 
kind I mean — you are mistaken.” 

She uttered it in calm, rather amicable accents. So I 
replied : 

“Why, why, of course I don’t! Indeed you are the 
most respectable and the most sweet-looking woman in the 
world!” 

I stepped up close to ner and reached out my hand to 
seize hold of her bare arm. 

“None of that, mister!” she flared up, drawing back. 
“Keep your hands where they belong. If you try that 
again I’ll break every bone in your body. May both my 
hands be paralyzed if I don’t!” 

“’S-sh,” I implored. Which only added fuel to her 
rage. 

“ ’S-sh nothing ! I’ll call in all the neighbors of the house 

9 I2I 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 

and tell them the kind of pious man you are. Saying his 
prayers three times a day, indeed!" 

I sneaked out of the house like a thief. I was wretched 
all day, wondering how I should come to supper in the 
evening. I wondered whether she was going to deliver me 
over to the jealous wrath of her husband. I should have 
willingly forfeited my trunk and settled in another place, 
but Mrs. Levinsky had an approximate knowledge of the 
places where I was likely to do business and there was the 
danger of a scene from her. Maximum Max's theory did 
not seem to count for much. But then he had said that 
one must know “how to go about it." Perhaps I had 
been too hasty. 

Late in the afternoon of that day Mrs. Levinsky came to 
see me. Pretending to be passing along on some errand, 
she paused in front of my cart, accosting me pleasantly. 

“I’ll bet you are angry with me," she said, smiling 
broadly. 

“ I am not angry at all," I answered, with feigned morose- 
ness. “But you certainly have a tongue. Whew! And, 
well, you can’t take a joke." 

“I did not mean to hurt your feelings, Mr. Levinsky. 
May my luck be as good as is my friendship for you. I 
certainly wish you no evil. May God give me all the 
things I wish you. I just want you to behave yourself. 
That’s all. I am so much older than you, anyhow. Look 
for somebody of your own age. You are not angry at me, 
are you?" she added, suavely. 

She simply could not afford to lose the rent I paid her. 

Since then she held herself at a respectful distance from 
me. 

I called on smiling Mrs. Dienstog, my former landlady, 
in whose house I was no stranger. I timed this visit at an 
bour when I knew her to be alone. 

In this venture I met with scarcely any resistance at 
first. She let me hold her hand and caress it and tell her 
bow soft and tender it was. 

“Do you think so?" she said, coyly, her eyes clouding 
with embarrassment. “I don’t think they are soft at all. 
They would be if I did not have so much washing and 
scrubbing to do." Then she added, sadly: “America has 

122 


A GREENHORN NO LONGER 


made a servant of me. A land of gold, indeed! When I 
was in my father’s house I did not have to scrub floors.” 

I attempted to raise her wrist to my lips, but she checked 
me. She did not break away from me, however. She 
held me off, but she did not let go of the index finger of my 
right hand, which she clutched with all her might, play- 
fully. As we struggled, we both laughed nervously. At 
last I wrenched my finger from her grip, and before she had 
time to thwart my purpose she was in my arms. I was 
aiming a kiss at her lips, but she continued to turn and 
twist, trying to clap her hand over my mouth as she did so^ 
and my kiss landed on one side of her chin. 

“Just one more, dearest,” I raved. “Only one on your 
sweet little lips, my dove. Only one. Only one.” 

She 3rielded. Our lips joined in a feverish kiss. Then 
she thrust me away from her and, after a pause, shook her 
finger at me with a good-natured gesture, as much as to say, 
“You must not do that, bad boy, you.” 

I went away in high feather. 

I called on Mrs. Dienstog again the very next morning. 
She received me well, but the first thing she did after re- 
turning my greeting was to throw the door wide open and 
to offer me a chair in full view of the hallway. 

“ Oh, shut the door,” I whispered, in disgust. “Don’t be 
foolish.” 

She shook her head. 

“Just one kiss,” I begged her. “You are so sweet.” 

She held firm. 

I came away sorely disappointed, but convinced that 
her inflexibility was a mere matter of practical common 
sense. 

I kept these experiences and reflections to myself. Nor 
did an indecent word ever cross my lips. In the street, 
while attending to my business, I heard uncouth language 
quite often. The other push-cart men would utter the 
most revolting improprieties in the hearing of the women 
peddlers, or even address such talk to them, as a matter of 
course. Nor was it an uncommon incident for a peddler 
to fire a volley of obscenities at a departing housewife 
who had priced something on his cart without bu5dng it. 
These things scandalized me beyond words. I could never 
get accustomed to them. 


123 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 


“Look at Levinsky standing there quiet as a kitten,” the 
other peddlers would twit me. “One would think he is so 
innocent he doesn’t know how to count two. Shy young 
fellows are the worst devils in the world.” 

They were partly mistaken, during the first few weeks of 
our acquaintance, at least. For the last thread that bound 
me to chasti1;y was still unbroken. It was rapidly wearing 
away, though. 


CHAPTER III 


T he last thread snapped. It was the beginning of a 
period of unrestrained misconduct. Intoxicated by 
the novelty of 3delding to Satan, I gave him a free hand and 
the result was months of debauchery and self-disgust. The 
underworld women I met, the humdrum filth of their life, 
and their matter-of-fact, business-like attitude toward it 
never ceased to shock and repel me. I never left a creature 
of this kind without abominating her and myself, yet I 
would soon, sometimes during the very same evening, call 
on her again or on some other woman of her class. 

Many of these women would simulate love, but they 
failed to deceive me. I knew that they lied and shammed 
to me just as I did to my customers, and their insincerities 
were only another source of repugnance to me. But I fre- 
quented them in spite of it all, in spite of myself. I spent 
on them more than I could afford. Sometimes I would 
borrow money or pawn something for the purpose of call- 
ing on them. 

The fact that these wretched women were not segregated 
as they were in my native town probably had something to 
do with it. Instead of being confined to a fixed out-of-the- 
way locality, they were allowed to live in the same tene- 
ment-houses with respectable people, beckoning to men 
from the front steps, under open protection from the police. 
Indeed, the police, as silent partners in the profits of their 
shame, plainly encouraged this vice traffic. All of which 
undoubtedly helped to make a profligate of me, but, of 
course, it would be preposterous to charge it all, or even 
chiefly, to the police. 

My wild oats were flavored with a sense of my failure as a 
business man, by my homesickness and passion for Matilda. 
My push-cart bored me. I was hungry for intellectual 
interest, for novel sensations. I was restless. Sometimes 
I would stop from business in the middle of the day to 

125 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 


plunge into a page of Talmud at some near-by synagogue, 
and sometimes I would lay down the holy book in the 
middle of a sentence and betake myself to the residence of 
some fallen woman 

In my loneliness I would look for some human element in 
my acquaintance with these women. I would ply them 
with questions about their antecedents, their family con- 
nections, as my mother had done the girl from “That” 
Street. 

As a rule, my questions bored them and their answers 
were obvious fabrications, but there were some exceptions. 

One of these, a pliunp, handsome, languid-eyed female 
named Bertha, occupied two tiny rooms in which she lived 
with her ten-year-old daughter. One of the two rooms 
was often full of men, some of them with heavy beards, 
who would sit there, each awaiting his turn, as patients do 
in the reception-room of a physician, and whiling their time 
away by chaffing the little girl upon her mother’s occupa- 
tion and her own future. Some of the questions and jokes 
they would address to her were of the most revolting 
nature, whereupon she would reply, “Oh, go to hell!” or 
stick out her tongue resentfully. 

One day I asked Bertha why she was giving her child 
this sort of bringing up. 

“I once tried to keep her in another place, with a re- 
spectable family,” she replied, ruefully. “But she would 
not stay there. Besides, I missed her so much I could not 
stand it.” 

Another fallen woman who was frank with me proved to 
be a native of Antomir; When she heard that I was from 
the same place she flushed with excitement. 

“Go away!” she shouted. “You’re fooling me.” 

We talked of the streets, lanes, and yards of our birth- 
place, she hailing every name I uttered with outbursts of 
wistful enthusiasm. 

I wondered whether she knew of my mother’s sensational 
death, but I never disclosed my identity to her, though she, 
on her part, told me with impetuous frankness the whole 
story of her life. 

“You are a Talmudist, aren’t you?” she asked. 

“How do you know?” 

^‘How do I know! As if it could not be seen by your 
126 


A GREENHORN NO LONGER 


face.” A little later she said: “I am sorry you came here. 
Honest. You should have stayed at home and stuck to 
your holy books. It would have been a thousand times 
better than coming to America and calling on girls like 
myself. Honest.” 

She was known as Argentine Rachael. 

It was from her that I first heard of the relations existing 
between the underworld and the police of New York. But 
then my idea of the Russian police had always been asso- 
ciated in my mind with everything cruel and dishonest, 
so the corruption of the New York police did not seem to be 
anything unusual. 

One day she said to me: “If you want a good street 
comer for your cart I can fix it for you. I know Cufi- 
Button Leary.” 

“Who is he?” 

“Why, have you never heard about him?’ 

“ Is he a big police officer?” 

“Bigger. The police are afraid of him.” 

“Why?” 

“Because he is the boss. He is the district leader. 
What he says goes.” 

She went on to explain that he was the local chieftaiu 
of the dominant “politician party,” as she termed it.. 

“What is a politician party?” I asked. 

She tried to define it and, failing in her attempt, she said, 
with a giggle: “Oh, you are a boob. You certainly are a 
green one. Why, it’s- an organization, a lot of people who 
stick together, don’t you know.” 

She talked on, and the upshot was that I formed a con- 
ception of political parties as of a kind of competing busi- 
ness companies whose specialty it was to make millions 
by ruling some big city, levying tribute on fallen women, 
thieves, and liquor-dealers, doing favors to friends and 
meting out punishment to foes. I learned also that 
District-Leader Leary owed his surname to a celebrated 
pair of diamond cuff-buttons, said to have cost him fifteen: 
thousand dollars, from which he never was separated, 
and by the blaze of which he could be recognized at a 
distance. 

“Well, shall I speak to him about you?” she asked. 

I gave her an evasive answer. 

127 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 


“Why, don’t you want to have favors from a girl like 
me?’’ she laughed. 

I colored, whereupon she remarked, reflectively: 
don’t blame you, either.’’ 

“She never tired talking of our birthplace. 

■“Aren’t you homesick?’’ she once demanded. 

“Not a bit,” I answered, with bravado. 

■“Then you have no heart. I have been away five times 
as long as you, yet I am homesick.” 

“Really?” 

“Honest.” 

She was as repellent to me as the rest of her class. I 
could never bring myself to accept a cup of tea from her 
hands. And yet I could not help liking her spirit. She was 
truthful and affectionate. This and, above all, her yearn- 
ing for our common birthplace appealed to me strongly. 
I was very much inclined to think that in spite of the 
horrible life she led she was a good girl. To hold this sort 
of opinion about a woman of her kind seemed to be an 
improper thing to do. I knew that according to the con- 
ventional idea concerning women of the street they were all 
the most hideous creatures in the world in every respect. 
So I would tell myself that I must consider her, too, one of 
the most hideous creatures in the world in every respect. 
But I did not. For I knew that at heart she was better 
than some of the most respectable people I had met. It 
was one of the astonishing discrepancies I had discovered 
in the world. Also, it was one of the things I had found 
to be totally different from what people usually thought 
they were. I was gradually realizing that the average man 
or woman was full of all sorts of false notions. 


CHAPTER IV 


1 ENROLLED in a public evening school. I threw 
myself into my new studies with unbounded enthu- 
siasm. After all, it was a matter of book-learning, some- 
thing in which I felt at home. Some of my classmates 
had a much better practical acquaintance with English 
than I, but few of these could boast the mental training 
that my Talmud education had given me. As a conse- 
quence, I found things irksomely slow. Still, the teacher — 
a young East Side dude, hazel-eyed, apple-faced, and girlish 
of feature and voice — ^was a talkative fellow, with oratorical 
proclivities, and his garrulousness was of great value to me. 
He was of German descent and, as I subsequently learned 
from private conversations with him, his mother was 
American-bom, like himself, so English was his mother- 
tongue in the full sense of the term. He would either ad- 
dress us wholly in that tongue, or intersperse it with in- 
terpretations in labored German, which, thanks to my 
native Yiddish, I had no difficulty in understanding. His 
name was Bender. At first I did not like him. Yet I 
would hang on his lips, striving to memorize every English 
word I could catch and watching intently, not only his 
enunciation, but also his gestures, manners, and manner- 
isms, and accepting it all as part and parcel of the American 
way of speaking 

Sign language, which was the chief means of communica- 
tion in the early days of mankind, still holds its own. It re- 
tains sway over nations of the highest culture with tongues 
of unlimited wealth and variety. And the gestures of the 
various countries are as different as their spoken lan^ages. 
The gesticulations and facial expressions with which an 
American will supplement his English are as distinctively 
American as those of a Frenchman are distinctively French. 
One can tell the nationality of a stranger by his gestures as 

129 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 


readily as by his language. In a vague, general way I had' 
become aware of this before, probably from contact with 
some American-born Jews whose gesticulations, when they 
spoke Yiddish, impressed me as utterly un-Yiddish. ^ And 
so I studied Bender’s gestures almost as closely as I did his 
words. 

Even the slight lisp in his “s” I accepted as part of the 
‘ ‘ real Y ankee ’ ’ utterance. N or, indeed, was this unnatural , 
in view of the “th” sound, that stumbling-block of every 
foreigner, whom it must needs strike as a full-grown lisp. 
Bender spoke with a nasal twang which I am now inclined 
to think he paraded as an accessory to the over-dignified 
drawl he affected in the class-room. But then I had no- 
ticed this kind of twang in the delivery of other Americans 
as well, so, altogether, English impressed me as the language 
of a people afflicted with defective organs of speech. Or 
else it would seem to me that the Americans had normal 
organs of speech, but that they made special efforts to dis- 
tort the “t” into a “th” and the “v” into a “w.” 

One of the things I discovered was the unsmiling smile. 
I often saw it on Bender and on other native Americans — 
on the principal of the school, for instance, who was an 
Anglo-Saxon. In Russia, among the people I knew, at 
least, one either smiled or not. Here I found a peculiar 
kind of smile that was not a smile. It would flash up into 
a lifeless flame and forthwith go out again, leaving the face 
cold and stiff. “They laugh with their teeth only,” I 
v/ould say to myself. But, of coirrse, I saw “real smiles,” 
too, on Americans, and I instinctively learned to discern the 
smile of mere politeness from the sort that came from one’s 
heart. Nevertheless, one evening, when we were reading in 
our school-book that “Kate had a smile for everybody,” 
and I saw that this was stated in praise of Kate, I had a 
disagreeable vision of a little girl going around the streets 
and grinning upon everybody she met. 

I abhorred the teacher for his girlish looks and affecta- 
tions, but his twang and “th” made me literally pant with 
hatred. At the same time I strained every nerve to imitate 
him in these very sounds. It was a hard struggle, and when 
I had overcome all difficulties at last, and my girlish-looking 
teacher complimented me enthusiastically upon my “thick” 
and “thin,” my aversion for him suddenly thawed out. 

130 


A GREENHORN NO LONGER 

Two of my classmates were a grizzly, heavy-set man 
and his sixteen-year-old son, both trying to learn English 
after a long day’s work. On one occasion, when it was the 
boy’s turn to read and he said “bat” for “bath,” the 
teacher bellowed, imperiously: 

“Stick out the tip of your tongue! This way.” 

The boy tried, and. failed. 

“Oh, you have the brain of a horse!” his father said, 
impatiently, in Yiddish. “Let me try, Mr. Teacher.” 
And screwing up his bewhiskered old face, he yelled, 
“Bat-t-t!” and then he shot out half an inch of thick red 
tongue. 

The teacher grinned, struggling with a more pronoimced 
manifestation of his mirth. 

“His tongue missed the train,” I jested, in Yiddish. 

One of the other pupils translated it into English, 
whereupon Bender's suppressed laughter broke loose, and 
I warmed to him still more. 

Election Day was drawing near. The streets were alive 
with the banners, transparencies, window portraits of rival 
candidates, processions, fireworks, speeches. I heard scores 
of words from the political jargon of the country. I was 
continually asking questions, inquiring into the meaning 
of the things I saw or heard around me. Each day brought 
me new experiences, fresh impressions, keen sensations. 
An American day seemed to be far richer in substance than 
an Antomir year. I was in an everlasting fiutter. I seemed 
to be panting for breath for the sheer speed with which I 
was rushing through life. 

What was the meaning of all this noise and excite- 
ment ? 

Everybody I spoke to said it was “all humbug.” People 
were making jokes at the expense of all politicians, irrespec- 
tive of parties. “One is as bad as the other,” I heard all 
around me. “They are all thieves.” Argentine Rachael’s 
conception of politics was clearly the conception of respect- 
able people as well. 

Rejoicing of the Law is one of our great autumn holidays. 
It is a day of picturesque merrymaking and ceremony, 
when the stringent rule barring women out of a synagogue 
is relaxed. On that day, which was a short time before 

131 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 

Election Day, I saw an East Side judge, a Gentile, at the 
synagogue of the Sons of Antomir. He was very short, 
and the high hat he wore gave him droll dignity. He went 
around the house of worship kissing babies in their mothers’ 
arms and saying pleasant things to the worshipers. Every 
little while he would instinctively raise his hand to his high 
hat and then, reminding himself that one did not bare one’s 
head in a synagogue, he would feverishly drop his hand 
again. 

This part of the scene was so utterly, so strikingly un- 
Russian that I watched it open-mouth^. 

“A great friend of the Jewish people, isn’t he?” the 
worshiper who stood next to me remarked, archly. 

“He is simply in love with us,” I chimed in, with a 
laughj by way of showing off my understanding of things 
American. “It’s Jewish votes he is after.” 

“Still, he’s not a bad fellow,” the man by my side re- 
marked. “ If you have a trial in his court he’ll decide it in 
your favor.” 

‘ ‘ How is that ?” I asked, perplexed. ‘ ‘ And how about the 
other fellow? He can’t decide in favor of both, can he?” 

“There is no ‘can’t’ in America,” the man by my side 
returned, with a sage smile. 

I pondered the riddle until I saw light. “I know what 
you mean, ’ ’ I said. ‘ ‘ He does favors only to those who vote 
for his party.” 

“You have hit it, upon my word! You’re certainly no 
longer a green one.” 

“Voting alone may not be enough, though,” another 
worshiper interposed. “ If you ever happen to have a case 
in his court, take a lawyer who is close to the judge. Un- 
derstand?” 

All such talks notwithstanding, the campaign, or the 
spectacular novelty of it, thrilled me. 

Bender delivered a speech to our class, but all I could 
make of it was that it dealt with elections in general, and 
that it was something solemn and lofty, like a prayer or a 
psalm. 

Election Day came round. I did not rest. I was con- 
tinually snooping around, watching the politicians and 
their “customers,” as we called the voters. Traffic in 
votes was quite an open business in those days, and I saw 

132 


A GREENHORN NO LONGER 

a good deal of it, on a side-street in the vicinity of a certain 
polling-place, or even in front of the polling-place itself, 
tinder the very eyes of policemen. I saw the bargaining, 
the haggling between buyer and seller; I saw money 
passed from the one to the other; I saw a heeler put a 
ballot into the hand of a man whose vote he had just 
purchased (the present system of voting had not yet been 
introduced) and then march him into a polling-place to 
make sure that he deposited the ballot for which he had 
paid him. I saw a man beaten black and blue because 
he had cheated the party that had paid him for his vote. 
I saw Leary, blazing cuff -buttons and all. He was a broad- 
shotddered man with rather pleasing features. I saw him 
listening to a whispered report from one of the men whom 
I had seen buying votes. 

There was no such thing as political life in the Russia of 
that period. The only poHtical parties in existence there 
were the secret organizations of revolutionists, of people for 
whom government detectives were incessantly searching 
so that they might be hanged or sent to Siberia. As a 
consequence a great many of our immigrants landed in 
America absolutely ignorant of the meaning of citizenship, 
and the first practical instructors on the subject into whose 
hands they fell were men like Ciiff-Button Leary or his 
political underlings. These taught them that a vote was 
something to be sold for two or three dollars, with the 
prospect of future favors into the bargain, and that a 
politician was a specialist in doing people favors. Favors, 
favors, favors! I heard the word so often, in connection 
with politics, that the two words became inseparable in 
my mind. A politician was a “master of favors,” as my 
native tongue would have it. 

I attended school with religious devotion. This and the 
rapid progress I was making endeared me to Bender, 
and he gave me special attention. He taught me grammar, 
which I relished most keenly. The prospect of going to 
school in the evening would loom before me, dining the hours 
of boredom or distress I spent at my cart, as a promise of 
divine pleasure. 

Some English words inspired me with hatred, as though 
they were obnoxious living things. The disagreeable im- 

133 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 

pression they produced on me was so strong that it made 
them easy to memorize, so that I welcomed them in spite of 
my aversion or, rather, because of it. The list of these 
words included “satisfaction,” “think,” and “because.” 

At the end of the first month I knew infinitely more 
English than I did Russian. 

One evening I asked Bender to tell me the “real differ- 
ence” between “I wrote” and “I have written.” He had 
explained it to me once or twice before, but I was none the 
wiser for it. 

“What do you mean by ^ real difference’?” he demanded. 
“I have told you, haven’t I, that ‘I wrote’ is the perfect 
tense, while T have written’ is the imperfect tense.” 
This was in accordance with the grammatical terminology 
of those days. 

“I know,” I replied in my wretched English, “but what 
is the difference between these two tenses? That’s just 
what bothers me.” 

“Well,” he said, grandly, “the perfect refers to what was^ 
wshile the imperfect means something that has been.” 

“But when do you say ‘was’ and when do you say 
‘has been’? That’s just the question.” 

“You’re a nuisance, Levinsky,” was his final retort. 

I was tempted to say, “And you are a blockhead.” 
But I did not, of course. At the bottom of my heart I 
had a conviction that one who had not studied the Talmud 
could not be anything but a blockhead. 

The first thing he did the next evening was to take up 
the same subject with me, the rest of the class watching 
the two of us curiously. I could see that his performance 
of the previous night had been troubling him and that he 
was bent upon making a better showing. He spent the 
entire lesson of two hoiu*s with me exclusively, trying all 
sorts of elucidations and illustrations, all without avail. 
The trouble with him was that he pictured the working of 
a foreigner’s mind, with regard to English, as that of his 
own. It did not occur to him that people bom to speak 
another language were guided by another language logic, so 
to say, and that in order to reach my understanding he 
would have to impart his ideas in terms of my own lin- 
guistic psychology. Still, one of his numerous examples 
gave me a glimmer of light and finally it all became clear 

134 


A GREENHORN NO LONGER 

to me. I expressed my joy so boisterously that it brought 
a roar of laughter from the other men. 

He made a pet of me. I became the monitor of his class 
(that is, I would bring in and distribute the books), and 
he often had me escort him home, so as to talk to me as 
we walked. He was extremely companionable and lo- 
quacious. He had a passion for sharing with others what- 
ever knowledge he had, or simply for hearing himself speak. 
Upon reaching the house in which he lived we would pause 
in front of the building for an hour or even more. Or else 
we would start on a ramble, usually through Grand Street 
to East River and back again through East Broadway. 
His favorite topics during these walks were civics, American 
history, and his own history. 

“ Dil-i-gence, perr-severance, tenacity!” he would drawl 
out, with nasal dignity. “Get these three words engraved 
on your mind, Levinsky. Diligence, perseverance, te- 
nacity.” 

And by way of illustration he would enlarge on how he 
had fought his way through City College, how he had won 
some prizes and beaten a rival in a race for the presidency 
of a literary society; how he had obtained his present two 
occupations — as custom-house clerk during the day and 
as school-teacher in the winter evenings — and how he was 
going to work himself up to something far more dignified 
and lucrative. He unbosomed himself to me of all his 
plans; he confided some of his intimate secrets in me, 
often dwelling on “my young lady,” who was a first 
cousin of his and to whom he had practically been engaged 
since boyhood. 

All this, his boasts not excepted, were of incalculable 
profit to me. It introduced me to detail after detail of 
American life. It accelerated the process of “getting me 
out of my greenhomhood ” in the better sense of the 
phrase. 

Bender was an ardent patriot. He was sincerely proud 
of his coimtry. He was firmly convinced that it was 
superior to any other country, absolutely in every respect. 
One evening, in the course of one of those rambles of ours, 
he took up the subject of political parties with me. He ex- 
plained the respective principles of the Republicans and the 
Democrats. Being a Democrat himself, he eulogized his 

135 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 


own organization and assailed its rival, but he did it strictly 
along the lines of principle and policy. 

“The principles of a party are its soul,” he thundered, 
probably borrowing the phrase from some newspaper. 
And he proceeded to show that the Democratic soul was 
of superior quality. 

He went into the question of State rights, of personal 
liberty, of “Jeffersonian ideals.” It was all an abstract 
formula, and I was so overwhelmed by the image of a great 
organization fighting for lofty ideals that the concrete 
question of political baby-kissing, of Cuff-Button Leary’s 
power, and of the scenes I had witnessed on Election Day 
escaped me at the moment. I merely felt that all I had 
heard about politics and political parties from Argentine 
Rachael and from other people was the product of untutored 
brains that looked at things from the special viewpoint of 
the gutter. 

Presently, however, the screaming discrepancy between 
Cuff-Button Leary’s rule and “Jeffersonian ideals” did 
occur to me. I conveyed my thoughts to Bender as well as 
I could. 

He flared up. “Nonsense,” he said, “Mr. Leary is the 
best man in the city. He is a friend of mine and I am 
proud of it. Ask him for any favor and he will do it for 
you if he has to get out of bed in the middle of the night. 
He spends a fortime on the poor. He has the biggest heart 
of any man in all New York, I don’t care who he is. He 
helps a lot of people out of trouble, but he can’t help every- 
body, can he? That’s why you hear so many bad things 
about him. He has a lot of enemies. But I love him just 
for the enemies he has made.” 

“ People say he collects bribes from disreputable women,” 
I ventured to m*ge. 

“ It’s a lie. It’s all rumors,” he shouted, testily. 

“On Election Day I saw a man who was buying votes 
whisper to him.” 

“Whisper to him! Whisper to him! Ha-ha, ha-ha! 
Well, is that all the evidence you have got against Mr. 
Leary? I suppose that’s the land of evidence you have 
about the buying of votes, too. I am afraid you don’t 
quite understand what you see, Levinsky.” 

His answers were far from convincing. I was wondering 
136 


A GREENHORN NO LONGER 

what interest he had to defend Leary, to deny things that 
everybody saw. But he disarmed me by the force of his 
irritation. 

Bender himself was a clean, honest fellow. In his 
peculi^ American way, he was very religious, and I knew 
that his piety was not a mere affectation. Which was an- 
other puzzle to me, for all the educated Jews of my birth- 
place were known to be atheists. He belonged to a Re- 
formed synagogue, where he conducted a Bible class. 

One evening he expanded on the beauty of the English 
translation of the Old Testament. He told me it was the 
best English to be found in all literature. 

“Study the Bible, Levinsky! Read it and read it 
again.” 

The suggestion took my fancy, for I could read the 
English Bible with the aid of the original Hebrew text. 
I began with Psalm 104, the poem that had thrilled me 
when I was on shipboard. I read the English version of it 
before Bender imtil I pronounced the words correctly. I 
thought I realized their music. I got the chapter by heart. 
When I recited it before Bender he was joyously surprised 
and called me a “corker.” 

“What is a corker?” I asked, beamingly. 

“It’s slang for ‘a great fellow.’” With which he burst 
into a lecture on slang. 

I often sat up till the small hours, studying the English 
Bible. I had many a quarrel with Mrs. Levinsky over the 
kerosene I consumed. Finally it was arranged that I 
should pay her five cents for every night I sat up late. 
But this merely changed the bone of contention between 
us. Instead of quarreling over kerosene, we would quarrel 
over hours — over the question whether I really had sat up 
late or not. 

To this day, whenever I happen to utter certain Biblical 
words or names in their English version, they seem to smell 
of Mrs. Levinsky’s lamp. 


10 


CHAPTER V 


E vening school dosed in April. The final session was 
of a festive character. Bender, excited and sentimental, 
distributed some presents. 

“Promise me that you will read this glorious book from 
beginning to end, Levinsky,” he said, solemnly, as he 
handed me a new voliune of Domhey and Son and a small 
dictionary. “We may never meet again. So, you will 
have something to remind you that once upon a time you 
had a teacher whose name was Bender and who tried to do 
his duty.” 

I wanted to thank him, to say something handsome, but 
partly because I was overcome by his gift, partly because 
I was at a loss for words, I merely kept saying, sheepishly, 
“Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.” 

That volume of Dickens proved to be the ruin of my 
push-cart business and caused me some weeks of the 
blackest misery I had ever experienced. 

As I started to read the voluminous book I found it an 
extremely difficult task. It seemed as though it was written 
in a language other than the one I had been studying during 
the past few months. I had to turn to the dictionary for the 
meaning of every third word, if not more often, while in 
many cases several words in succession were Greek to me. 
Some words could not be found in my little dictionary at 
all, and in the case of many others the English definitions 
were as much of an enigma to me as the words they were 
supposed to interpret. Yet I was making headway. I 
had to turn to the dictionary less and less often. 

It was the first novel I had ever read. The dramatic 
interest of the narrative, coupled with the poetry and the 
humor with which it is so richly spiced, was a revelation to 
me. I had had no idea that Gentiles were* capable of any- 
thing so wonderful in the line of book-writing. To all of 

138 


A GREENHORN NO LONGER 

which should be added my self-congratulations upon being- 
able to read English of this sort, a state of mind which 
I was too apt to mistake for my raptures over Dickens. 
It seemed to me that people who were bom to speak this; 
language were of a superior race. 

I was literally intoxicated, and, drunkard-like, I would 
delay going to business from hour to hour. The upshot was 
that I became so badly involved in debt that I dared not 
appear with my push-cart for fear of scenes from my 
creditors. Moreover, I scarcely had anything to sell. 
Finally I disposed of what little stock I still possessed for 
one-fourth of its value, and, to my relief as well as to my 
despair, my activities as a peddler came to an end. 

I went on reading, or, rather, studying, Dombey and Son 
with voluptuous abandon till I found myself literally 
penniless. 

I procured a job with a man who sold dill pickles to 
Jewish grocers. From his description of my duties — 
chiefly as his bookkeeper — I expected that they would leave 
me plenty of leisure, between whiles, to read my Dickens. 
I was mistaken. My first attempt to open the book during 
business hours, which extended from 8 in the morning 
to bedtime, was suppressed. My employer, who had the 
complexion of a dill pickle, by the way, proved to be a 
severe taskmaster, absurdly exacting, and so niggardly that 
I dared not take a decent-looking pickle for my lunch. 

I left him at the end of the second week, obtaining em- 
plo5rment in a prosperous fish-store next door. My new 
“boss” was a kinder and pleasanter man, but then the 
malodorous and clamorous chaos of his place literally 
sickened me. 

I left the fishmonger and jumped my board at Mrs. 
Levinsky’s to go to a New Jersey farm, where I was engaged 
to read Yiddish novels to the illiterate wife of a New York 
merchant, but my client was soon driven from the place by 
the New Jersey mosquitoes and I returned to New York 
with two dollars in my pocket. I worked as assistant in 
a Hebrew school where the American-bom boys mocked my 
English and challenged me to have an “American fight” 
with them, till — on the third day — I administered a soimd 
un-American thrashing to one of them and lost my job. 

Maximum Max got the proprietor of one of the dance* 
139 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 

halls in which he did his instalment business to let me sleep 
in his basement in return for some odd jobs. While there 
I earned from two to three dollars a week in tips and a good 
supper every time there was a wedding in the place, which 
happened two or three times a week. I had plenty of 
time for Dickens (I was still burrowing my way through 
Dombey and Son) while the “affairs” of the hall — weddings, 
banquets, balls, mass meetings — were quite exciting. I felt 
happy, but this happiness of mine did not last long. I was 
soon sent packing. 

This is the way it came about. It was in the large ball- 
room of the establishment in question that I saw a “mod- 
em” dance for the first time in my life. It produced a 
bewitching effect on me. Here were highly respectable 
young women who would let men encircle their waists, 
each resting her arm on her partner’s shoulder, and then 
go spinning and hopping with him, with a frank relish of 
the physical excitement in which they were joined. As I 
watched one of these girls I seemed to see her surrender 
much of her womanly reserve. I knew that the dance — 
an ordinary waltz — ^was considered highly proper, yet her 
pose and his stmck me as a public confession of unseemly 
mutual interest. I almost blushed for her. And for the 
moment I was in love with her. As this young woman went 
round and round her face bore a faint smile of embarrassed 
satisfaction. I knew that it was a sex smile. Another 
woman danced with grave mien, and I knew that it was the 
gravity of sex. 

To watch dancing couples became a passion with me. 
One evening, as I stood watching the waltzing members of 
a wedding party, a married sister of the bride’s shouted to 
me in Yiddish: 

“What are you doing here? Get out. You’re a kill- 
joy.” 

This was her way of alluding to my unpresentable ap- 
pearance. When the proprietor heard of the incident he 
sent for me. He told me that I was a nuisance and bade 
me find another “hang-out” for myself. 

The following month or two constitute the most wretched 
period of my life in America. I slept in the cheapest lodg- 
ing-houses on the Bowery and not infrequeiitly in some 

14Q 


A GREENHORN NO LONGER 

express-wagon. I was constantly borrowing quarters,, 
dimes, nickels. 

Maximum Max was very kind to me. As I could not. 
meet him at the stores, where I dared not face my creditors, 
I would waylay him in front of his residence. 

“ I tell you what, Levinsky,” he once said to me. “You 
ought to learn some trade. It’s plain you were not born to 
be a business man. The black dots [meaning the words 
in books] take up too much room in your head.” 

Finally I owed him so many quarters, and even half- 
dollars, that I had not the courage to ask him for more. 

Hunger was a frequent experience. I had been no 
stranger to the sensation at Antomir, at least after the 
death of my mother; but, for some reason, I was now 
less capable of bearing it. The pangs I underwent were 
at times so acute that I would pick up cigarette stubs in the 
street and smoke them, without being a smoker, for the 
purpose of having the pain supplanted by dizziness and 
nausea. Sometimes, too, I would bum my hand with a 
match or bite it as hard as I could. Any kind of suffering 
or excitement was welcome, provided it made me forget, 
my hunger. 

When famished I would sometimes saunter through the 
streets on the lower East Side which disreputable- creatures 
used as their market-place. It was mildly exciting to 
watch women hunt for men and men hunt for women: 
their furtive glances, winks, tacit understandings, bargain- 
ings, the little subterfuges by which they sought to veil 
their purpose from the other passers-by; the way a man 
would take stock of a passing woman to ascertain whether 
she was of the approachable class; the timidity of some of 
the men and the matter-of-fact ease of others; the mutual 
spying of two or three rivals aiming at the same quarry; 
the pretended abstraction of the policemen, and a himdred 
and one other details of the traffic. Many a time I joined 
in the chase without having a cent in my pocket, stop to 
discuss terms with a woman in front of some window dis- 
play, or arotind a comer, only soon to turn away from her 
on the pretense that I had expected to be taken to her^ 
residence while she proposed going to some hotel. Thus,, 
held by a dull, dogged fascination, I would tramp around,, 
sometimes for hours, until, feeling on the verge of a fainting- 

141 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 

spell with himger and exhaustion, I would sit down on the 
front steps of some house. 

I often thought of Mr. Even, but nothing was further 
from my mind than to let him see me in my present plight. 
One morning I met him, face to face, on the Bowery, but 
lie evidently failed to recognize me. 

One afternoon I called on Argentine Rachael. “Look 
here, Rachael,” I said, in a studiously matter-of-fact 
voice, “I’m dead broke to-day. I’ll pay you in a day or 
two.” 

Her face fell. “ I never trust. Never,” she said, shaking 
her head mournfully. “It brings bad luck, anyhow.” 

I felt like sinking into the ground. “All right, I’ll see 
you some other time,” I said, with an air of bravado. 

She ran after me. “Wait a moment. What’s your 
liurry?” 

By way of warding off “bad luck,” she offered to lend me 
three dollars in cash, out of which I could pay her. I 
declined her offer. She pleaded and expostulated. But I 
.stood firm, and I came away in a state of the blackest 
wretchedness and self-disgust. 

I could never again bring myself to show my face at her 
house. 

A little music-store was now my chief resort. It was 
kept by a man whom I had met at the synagogue of the 
Sons of Antomir, a former cantor who now supplemented 
his income from the store by doing occasional service as 
a wedding bard. The musicians, singers, and music- 
teachers who made the place their headquarters had begun 
by taking an interest in me, but the dimes and nickels I 
was now unceasingly “borrowing” of them had turned me 
into an outcast in their eyes. I felt it keenly. I would 
sulk around the store, anxious to leave, and loitering in 
spite of myself. There was a piano in the store, upon 
which they often played. This, their talks of music, and 
their venomous gossip had an irresistible fascination for 
me. 

I noticed that morbid vanity was a common disease 
among them. Some of them would frankly and boldly sing 
their own panegyrics, while others, more discreet and 
tactful, let their high opinions of themselves be inferred. 
JNor could they conceal the grudges they bore one another, 

142 


A GREENHORN NO LONGER 


the jealousies with which they were eaten up. I thought 
them ludicrous, repugnant, and yet they lured me. I felt 
that some of those among them who were most grotesque 
and revolting in their selfishness had something in their 
make-up — certain interests, passions, emotions, visions — 
which placed them above the common herd. This was 
especially true of a spare, haggard-looking violinist, boyish 
of figure and cat-like of manner, with deep dark rings under 
his insatiable blue eyes. He called himself Octavius. He 
was literally consiuned by the blaze of his own conceit and 
envy. When he was not in raptures over the poetry, 
subtlety, or depth of his own playing or compositions, he 
would give way to paroxysms of malice and derision at the 
expense of some other musician, from his East Side rivals 
all the way up to Sarasate, who was then at the height of his 
career and had recently played in New York. Wagner 
was his god, yet no sooner would somebody else express 
admiration for Wa^er music than he would offer to show 
that all the good things in the works of the famous German 
were merely so many paraphrased plagiarisms from the 
compositions of other men. He possessed a phenomenal 
memory. He seemed to remember every note in every 
opera, s)n3iphony, oratorio, or concerto that anybody ever 
mentioned, and there was not a piece of music by a cele- 
brated man but he was ready to “prove” that it had been 
stolen from some other celebrated man. 

His invective was particularly violent when he spoke of 
those Jewish immigrants in the musical profession whose 
success had extended be 3 ^ond the East Side. He could 
never mention without a jeer or some coarse epithet the 
name of a Madison Street boy, a violinist, who was then 
attracting attention in Europe and who was booked for a 
series of concerts before the best audiences in the United 
States. 

He was a passionate phrase-maker. Indeed, it would 
have been difficult to determine which afforded him more 
pleasure — his self-laudations or the colorful, pungent, often 
preposterous language in which they were clothed. 

'‘I am writing something with hot tears in it,” I once 
heard him brag. “They’ll be so hot they’ll scald the heart 
of every one who hears it, provided he has a heart.” 

JJe given me some nickels^ yet his boasts would fill 

143 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 


me with disgust. On the occasion just mentioned I was 
so irritated with my poverty and with the whole world 
that I was seized with an irresistible desire to taunt him. 
As he continued to eulogize his forthcoming masterpiece 
I threw out a Hebrew quotation : 

“Let others praise thee, but not thine own mouth.” 

He took no heed of my thrust. But since then he never 
looked at me and I never dared ask him for a nickel again. 

He had a ferocious temper. When it broke loose it 
would be a veritable volcano of revolting acrimony, his 
thin, firm opening and snapping shut in a peculiar fashion, 
as though he were squirting venom all over the floor. He 
was as sensual as Maximum Max, only his voluptuous talks 
-of women were far more offensive in form. But then his 
lewd drivel was apt to glitter with flashes of imagination. 
I do not remember ever seeing him in good humor. 


BOOK VII 


MY TEMPLE 



CHAPTER I 


NE Friday evening in September I stood on Grand 



Street with my eyes raised to the big open windows of 
a dance-hall on the second floor of a brick building on the 
opposite side of the lively thoroughfare. Only the busts 
of the dancers could be seen. This and the distance 
that divided me from the hall enveloped the scene in 
mystery. As the couples floated by, as though borne 
along on waves of the music, the girls clinging to the men, 
their fantastic figures held me spellbound. Several other 
people were watching the dancers from the street, mostly 
women, who gazed at the appearing and disappearing 
images with envying eyes. 

Presently I was accosted by a dandified-looking young 
man who rushed at me with an exuberant, “How are you?” 
in English. He was dressed in the height of the summer 
fashion. He looked familiar to me, but I was at a loss to 
locate him. 

“Don’t you know me? Try to remember!” 

It was Gitelson, my fellow-passenger on board the ship 
that had brought me to America, the tailor who clung to my 
side when I made my entry into the New World, sixteen 
months before. 

The change took my breath away. 

“You didn’t recognize me, did you?” he said, with a 
triumphant snicker, pulling out his cuffs so as to flaunt 
their gold or gilded buttons. 

He asked me what I was doing, but he was more inter- 
ested in telling me about himself. That cloak-contractor 
who picked him up near Castle Garden had turned out to be 
a skinflint and a slave-driver. He had started him on five 
dollars a week for work the market price of which was 
twenty or thirty. So Gitelson left him as soon as he 
realized his real worth, and he had been making good 


147 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 


wages ever since. Being an excellent tailor, he was much 
sought after, and although the trade had two long slack 
seasons he always had plenty to do. He told me that he 
was going to that dance-hall across the street, which 
greatly enhanced his importance in my eyes and seemed 
to give reality to the floating phantoms that I had been 
watching in those windows. He said he was in a hurry 
to go up there, as he had “an appointment with a lady” 
(this in English), yet he went on describing the picnics, 
balls, excursions he attended. 

Thereupon I involimtarily shot a look at his jaunty 
straw hat, thinking of his gray forelock. I did so several 
times. I could not help it. Finally my furtive glances 
attracted his attention. 

“What are you looking at? Anything wrong with my 
hat?” he asked, baring his head. His hair was freshly 
trimmed and dudishly dressed. As I looked at the patch 
of silver hair that shone in front of a glossy expanse of 
brown, he exclaimed, with a laugh: “Oh, you mean that! 
That’s nothing. The ladies like me all the same.” 

He went on boasting, but he did it in an inoffensive 
way. He simply could not get over the magic transforma- 
tion that had come over him. While in his native place his. 
income had amoimted to four rubles (about two dollars) 
a week, his wages here were now from thirty to forty dollars. 
He felt like a peasant suddenly turned to a prince. But he 
spoke of his successes in a pleasing, soft voice and with a 
l^dly, confiding smile that won my heart. Altogether 
he made the impression of an exceedingly unaggressive, 
good-nattued fellow, without anything like ginger in his 
make-up. 

After he had bragged his fill he invited me to have a 
glass of soda with hun. There was a soda-stand on the 
next comer, and when we reached it I paused, but he 
pulled me away. 

“Come on,” he said, disdainfully. “We’ll go into a 
dmg-store, or, better still, let’s go to an ice-cream 
parlor.” 

This I hesitated to do because of my shabby clothes. 
When he divined the cause of my embarrassment he was 
touched. 

“Come on!” he said, with warm hospitality, uttering the 
148 


MY TEMPLE 


two words in English. “When I say ‘Come on’ I know 
what I am talking about.’’ 

“But your lady is waiting for you.’’ 

“She can wait. Ladies are never on time, anyhow.’’ 

“But maybe she is.’’ 

“If she is she can dance with some of the other fellows. 
I wouldn’t be jealous. There are plenty of other ladies. 
I should not take fifty ladies for this chance of seeing you. 
Honest.’’ 

He took me into a little candy-store, dazzlingly lighted 
and mirrored and filled with marble-topped tables. 

We seated oiuselves and he gave the order. He did so 
rather swaggeringly, but his manner to me was one of 
affectionate and compassionate respectfulness. 

“ Oh, I am so glad to see you,’’ he said. “ You remember 
the ship?’’ 

“As if one could ever forget things of that kind.” 

“I have often thought of you. ‘I wonder what has be- 
come of him,’ I said to myself.” 

He did not remember my name, or perhaps he had never 
known it, so I had to introduce myself afresh. The con- 
trast between his flashy clothes and my frowsy, wretched- 
looking appearance, as I saw ourselves in the mirrors on 
either side of me, made me sorely ill at ease. The brilliancy 
of the gaslight chafed my nerves. It was as though it had 
been turned on for the express ptupose of illuminating my 
disgrace. I was longing to go away, but Gitelson fell to 
questioning me about my affairs once more, and this time 
he did so with such unfeigned concern that I told him the 
whole cheerless' story of my sixteen months’ life in America. 

He was touched. In his mild, unemphatic way he ex- 
pressed heartfelt sympathy. 

“But why don’t you learn some trade?” he inquired. 
“You don’t seem to be fit for business, anyhow” (the last 
two words in mispronounced English). 

“Everybody is telling me that.” 

“There you are. You just listen to me, Mr. Levinsky. 
You won’t be sorry for it.” 

He proposed machine-operating in a cloak-shop, which 
paid even better than tailoring and was far easier to learn. 
Finally he offered to introduce me to an operator who would 
teach me the trade, and to pay him my tuition fee. 

149 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 

He went into details. He continued to address me as 
Mr. Levinsky and tried to show me esteem as his intellectual 
superior, but, in spite of himself, as it were, he gradually 
took a respectfully contemptuous tone with me. 

“Don’t be a lobster, Mr. Levinsky.” (“Lobster” he 
said in English.) “This is not Russia. Here a fellow 
must be no fool. There is no sense in living the way you 
do. Do as Gitelson tells you, and you’ll live decently, dress 
decently, and lay by a dollar or two. There are lots of 
educated fellows in the shops.” He told me of some of 
these, particularly of one young man who was a shopmate 
of his. “He never comes to work without some book,” 
he said. “When there is not enough to do he reads. 
When he has to wait for a new ‘bundle,’ as we call it, he 
reads. Other fellows carry on, but he is always reading. 
He is so highly educated he could read any kind of book, 
and I don’t believe there is a book in the world that he has 
not read. He is saving up money to go to college.” 

On parting he became fully respectful again. “Do as I 
tell you, Mr. Levinsky,” he said. “Take up cloak- 
making.” 

He made me write down his address. He expected that 
I would do it in Yiddish. When he saw me write his name 
and the name of the street in English he said, reverently: 

“Writing English already! There is a mind for you! 
If I could write like that I could become a designer. Well, 
don’t lose the address. Call on me, and if you make up 
your mind to take up cloak-making just say the word and 
I’ll fix you up. When Gitelson says he will, he will.” 

The image of that cloak-operator reading books and 
laying by money for a college education haunted me. 
Why could I not do the same? I pictured myself working 
and stud3dng and saving money for the kind of education 
which Matilda had dinned into my ears. 

I accepted Gitelson’s offer. Cloak-making or the cloak 
business as a career never entered my dreams at that time. 
I regarded the trade merely as a stepping-stone to a life of 
intellectual interests. 


CHAPTER II 


T he operator to whom Gitelson apprenticed me was 
a short, plump, dark-complexioned fellow named Joe. 
I have but a dim recollection of his features, though I dis- 
tinctly remember his irresistible wide-eyed smile and his 
emotional nature. 

He taught me to bind seams, and later to put in pockets, 
to stitch on “under collars,” and so forth. After a while 
he began to pay me a small weekly wage, he himself being 
paid, for our joint work, by the piece. The shop was not 
the manufacturer’s. It belonged to one of his contractors, 
who received from him “bundles” of material which his 
employees (tailors, machine - operators, pressers, and 
finisher girls) made up into cloaks or jackets. The cheaper 
goods were made entirely by operators; the better grades 
partly by tailors, partly by operators, or wholly by tailors; 
but these were mostly made “inside,” in the manufacturer’s 
own establishment. The designing, cutting, and making 
of samples were “inside” branches exclusively. Gitelson, 
as a skilled tailor, was an “inside” man, being mostly em- 
ployed on samples. 

My work proved to be much harder and the hours very 
much longer than I had anticipated. I had to toil from 
six in the morning to nine in the evening. (Joe put in even 
more time. I always found him grinding away rapturously 
when I came to the shop in the morning, and always left 
him toiling as rapturously when I went home in the evening.) 
Ours is a seasonal trade. All the work of the year is 
crowded into two short seasons of three and two months, 
respectively; during which one is to earn enough to last 
him twelve months (only sample-makers, high-grade 
tailors like Gitelson, were kept busy throughout the year). 
But then wages were comparatively high, so that a good 
mechanic, particularly an operator, could make as much 

151 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 


as seventy-five dollars a week, working about fifteen hours 
a day. However, during the first two or three weeks I 
was too much borne down by the cruelty of my drudgery 
to be interested in the luring rewards which it held out. 
Not being accustomed to physical exertion of any kind, I 
felt like an innocent man suddenly thrown into prison and 
put at hard labor. I was shocked. I was crushed. I was 
continually looking at the clock, counting the minutes, 
and when I came home I would feel so sore in body and spirit 
that I could not sleep. Studying or reading was out of the 
question. 

Moreover, as a peddler I seemed to have belonged to the 
world of business, to the same class as the rich, the refined, 
while now, behold! I was a workman, a laborer, one of 
the masses. I pitied myself for a degraded wretch. And 
when some of my shopmates indulged in coarse pleasantry 
in the hearing of the finisher girls it would hurt me per- 
sonally, as a confirmation of my disgrace. “And this is 
the kind of people with whom I am doomed to associate!” 
I would lament. In point of fact, there were only four or 
five fellows of this kind in a shop of fifty. Nor were some 
of the peddlers or music-teachers I had known more modest 
of speech than the worst of these cloak-makers. What was 
more, I felt that some of my fellow-employees were purer 
and better men than I. But that did not matter. I 
abhorred the shop and everybody in it as a well-bred con- 
vict abhors his jail and his fellow-inmates. 

When the men quarreled they would call one another, 
among other things, “bundle-eaters.” This meant that 
they accused one another of being ever hungry for bundles 
of raw material, ever eager to “ gobble up all the work in the 
shop.” I wondered how one could be anxious for physical 
toil. They seemed to be a lot of savages. 

The idea of leaving the shop often crossed my mind, but 
I never had the courage to take it seriously. I had tried 
my hand at peddling and failed. Was I a failure as a 
mechanic as well? Was I unfit for anything? The other 
fellows at the shop had a definite foothold in life, while 
I was a waif, a ne’er-do-well, nearly two years in America 
with nothing to show for it. Thoughts such as these had a 
cowing effect on me. They made me feel somewhat like 
the fresh prisoner who has been put to work at stone- 

152 


MY TEMPLE 


breaking to have his wild spirit broken. I dared not give 
up my new occupation. I would force myself to work hard, 
and as I did so the very terrors of my toil would fascinate 
me, giving me a sense of my own worth. As the jackets 
that bore my stitches kept piling up, the concrete result of 
my useful performance would become a source of moral 
satisfaction to me. And when I received my first wages — 
the first money I had ever earned by the work of my hands 
— ^it seemed as if it were the first money I had ever earned 
honestly. 

By little and little I got used to my work and even to 
enjoy its processes. Moreover, the thinking and the 
dreaming I usually indulged in while plying my machine 
became a great pleasure to me. It seem^ as though one’s 
mind could not produce such interesting thoughts or images 
unless it had the rh3^hmic whir of a sewing-machine to 
stimulate it. 

I now ate well and slept well. I was in the best of health 
and in the best of spirits. I was in an uplifted state of 
mind. No one seemed to be honorable who did not earn 
his bread in the sweat of his brow as I did. Had I then 
chanced to hear a Socialist speech I might have become an 
ardent follower of Karl Marx and my life might have been 
directed along lines other than those which brought me to 
financial power. 

. The girls in the shop, individually, scarcely interested 
me, but their collective presence was something of which 
I never seemed to be qmte unconscious. It was as though 
the workaday atmosphere were scented with the breath 
of a delicate perfume — a perfume that was tainted with the 
tang of my yearning for Matilda. 

Two girls who were seated within a yard from my ma- 
chine were continually bandying secrets. Now one and 
then the other would look around to make sure that the 
contractor was not watching, and then she would bend 
over and whisper something into her chum’s ear. This 
would set my blood tingling with a peculiar kind of in- 
quisitiveness. It was reasonable to suppose that their 
whispered conferences mostly bore upon such innocent 
matters as their work, earnings, lodgings, or dresses. 
Nevertheless, it seemed to me that their whispers, especially 
when accompanied by a smile, a giggle, or a wink, conveyed 

II 153 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 

some of their intimate thoughts of men. They were 
homely girls, with pinched faces, yet at such moments they 
represented to me all that there was fascinating and 
disquieting in womanhood. 

The jests of the foul-mouthed rowdies would make me 
writhe with disgust. As a rule they were ostensibly ad- 
dressed to some of the other fellows or to nobody in par- 
ticular, their real target being the nearest girls. These 
would receive them with gestmres of protest or with an 
exclamation of mild repugnance, or — in the majority of 
cases — pass them unnoticed, as one does some unavoidable 
discomfort of toil. There was only one girl in the shop 
who received these jests with a shamefaced grin or even with 
frank appreciation, and she was a perfectly respectable girl 
like the rest. There were some finisher girls who could not 
boast an unsullied reputation, but none of them worked in 
our shop, and, indeed, their number in the entire trade 
was very small. 

One of the two girls who sat nearest to my machine 
was quite popular in the shop, but that was because of her 
sweet disposition and soimd sense rather than for her 
looks. She was known to have a snug little account in a 
savings-bank. It was for a marriage portion she was 
saving; but she was doing it so strenuously that she 
stinted herself the expense of a decent dress or hat, or the 
price of a ticket to a ball, picnic, or dancing-class. The 
result was that while she was pinching and scrimping her- 
self to pave the way to her marriage she barred herself, 
by this very process, from contact with possible suitors. 
She was a gocxi soul. From time to time she would give 
. some of her money to a needy relative, and then she would 
try to make up for it by saving with more ardor than ever. 
Her name was Gussie. 

Joe, the plump, dark fellow who was teaching me the 
trade, was one of the several men in the shop who were 
addicted to salacious banter. One of his favorite pranks 
was to burlesque some synago^e chant from the solemn 
service of the Days of Awe, with disgustingly coarse Yid- 
dish in place of the Hebrew of the prayer. But he was not 
a bad fellow, by any means. He was good-natured, ex- 
tremely impressionable, and susceptible of good influences. 
A sad tune would bring a woebegone look into his face, 
154 


MY TEMPLE 


while a good joke would make him laugh to tears. He was 
fond of referring to himself as my “ rabbi,” which is Hebrew 
for teacher, and that was the way I would address him, at 
first playfully, and then as a matter of course. 

One day, after he had delivered himself of a quip that 
set my teeth on edge, I said to him, appealingly: 

“Why should you be saying these things, rabbi?” 

“If you don’t like them you can stop yoiir God-fearing 
ears,” he fired back, good-naturedly. 

I retorted that it was not a matter of piety, but of com- 
mon decency, and my words were evidently striking home, 
but the girls applauded me, which spoiled it all. 

“If you want to preach sermons you’re in the wrong 
place,” he flared up. “This is no synagogue.” 

“Nor is it a pigsty,” Gussie urged, without raising her 
eyes from her work. 

A month or two later he abandoned these sallies of his 
own accord. The other fellows twitted him on his burst 
of “righteousness” and made efforts to lure him into a race 
of ribald ptmning, but he stood his ground. 

By and by it leaked out that he was engaged and madly 
in love with his girl. I warmed to him. 

The yoimg woman who had won his heart was not an 
employee of our shop. Indeed, love-affairs between work- 
ing-men and working-girls who are employed in the same 
place are not quite so common as one might suppose. The 
factory is scarcely a proper setting for romance. It is 
one of the battle-fields in oiu* struggle for existence, where 
we treat woman as an inferior being, whereas in civilized 
love-making we prefer to keep up the chivalrous fiction 
that she is our superior. The girls of our shop, hard- 
worked, disheveled, and handled with an5d;hing but chiv- 
alry, aroused my S5mipathy, but it was not the kind of 
feeling that stimulates romantic interest. Still, collec- 
tively, as an abstract reminder of their sex, they flavored 
my sordid environment with poetry. 


CHAPTER III 


T he majority of the students at the College of the City 
of New York was already made up of Jewish boys, 
mostly from the tenement-houses. One such student often 
called at the cloak-shop in which I was employed, and in 
which his father — a tough-looking fellow with a sandy 
beard, a former teamster— was one of the pressers. A 
classmate of this boy was supported by an aunt, a spinster 
who made good wages as a bunch-maker in a cigar-factory. 
To make an educated man of her nephew was the great 
ambition of her life. All this made me feel as though I 
were bound to that college with the ties of kinship. Two 
of my other shopmates had sons at high school. The 
East Side was full of poor Jews — wage-earners, peddlers, 
grocers, salesmen, insurance agents — ^who would beggar 
themselves to give their children a liberal education. 
Then, too, thousands of our working-men attended public 
evening school, while many others took lessons at home. 
The Ghetto rang with a clamor for knowledge. 

To save up some money and prepare for college seemed 
to be the most natural thing for me to do. I said to myself 
that I must begin to study for it without delay. But that 
was impossible, and it was quite some time before I took 
up the course which the presser’s boy had laid out for me. 
During the first three months I literally had no time to 
open a book. Nor was that all. My work as a* cloak- 
maker had become a passion with me, so much so that even 
on Saturdays, when the shop was closed, I would scarcely 
do any reading. Instead, I would seek the society of other 
cloak-makers with whom I might talk shop. 

I was developing speed rather than skill at my sewing- 
machine, but this question of speed afforded exercise to 
my brain. It did not take me long to realize that the 
number of cloaks or jackets which one turned out in a 
156 


MY TEMPLE 

given length of time was largely a matter of method and 
system. I perceived that Joe, who was accounted a fast 
hand, would take up the various parts of a garment in a 
certain order calculated to reduce to a minimum the 
amoimt of time lost in passing from section to section. 
So I watched him intently, studying his system with every 
fiber of my being. Nor did I content myself with imitating 
his processes. I was forever pondering the problem and 
intr^ucing little improvements of my own. I was making 
a science of it.^ It was not merely physical exertion. It 
was a source of intellectual interest as well. I was wrapped 
up in it. If I happened to meet a cloak-operator who was 
no^ for ex^aordina^ speed I would feel like an am- 
bitious musician meeting a famous virtuoso. Some cloak- 
operators were artists. I certainly was not one of them. 
I admired their work and envied them, but I lacked the 
artistic patience and the dexterity essential to workman- 
ship of a high order. Much to my chagrin, I was a bom 
bungler. But then I possessed physical strength, nervous 
vitality, method, and inventiveness — all the elements that 
go to make up speed. 

I was progressing with unusual rapidity. Joe criticized 
my work severely, often calling me botcher, but I knew that 
this was chiefly intended to veil his satisfaction at the 
growing profits that my work was yielding him. 

I now earned about ten dollars a week, of which I spent 
about five, saving the rest for the next season of idleness. 

At last that season set in. There was not a stroke of 
work in the shop. I was so absorbed in my new vocation 
that I would pass my evenings in a cloak-makers’ haunt, a 
cafe on Delancey Street, where I never tired talking sleeves, 
pockets, stitches, trimmings, and the like. There was a 
good deal of card-pla5dng in the place, but somehow I never 
succumbed to that temptation. 

But then, under the influence of some of the fellows I 
met there, I developed a considerable passion for the 
Jewish theater. These young men were what is known on 
the East Side as “patriots,” that is, devoted admirers of 
some actor or actress and members of his or her voluntary 
claque. Several of the other frequenters were also in- 
terested in the stage, or at least in the gossip of it; so that, 
on the whole, there was as much talk of plays and players 

157 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 


as there was of cloaks and cloak-makers. Our shop dis- 
cussions certainly never reached the heat that usually 
characterized our debates on things theatrical. 

The most ardent of the “patriots” was a yotmg con- 
tractor named Mindels. He attended nearly every per- 
formance in which his favorite actor had a part, selling 
dozens of tickets for his benefit performances and usually 
losing considerable sums on these sales, loading him with 
presents and often running his errands. I once saw 
Mindels in a violent quarrel with a man who had scoffed 
at his idol. 

Mindels’s younger brother, Jake, fascinated me by his 
appearance, and we became great chums. He was the 
handsomest fellow I ever had seen, with a fine head of dark- 
brown hair, classic features, and large, soft-blue eyes; too 
soft and too blue, perhaps. His was a manly face and 
figure, and his voice was a manly, a beautiful basso; but 
this masculine exterior contained an effeminate psychology. 
In my heart I pronounced him “a calf,” and when I had 
discovered the English word “sissy,” I thought that it 
just fitted him. Yet I adored him, and even looked up 
to him, all because of his good looks. 

He was a Talmudist like myself, and we had much in 
common, also, regarding our dreams of the future. 

“Oh, I am so glad I have met you,” I once said to him. 

“I am glad, too,” he returned, flushing. 

I foimd that he blushed rather too frequently, which 
■confirmed my notion of him as a sissy. Like most hand- 
some men, he bestowed a great deal of time on his personal 
appearance. He never uttered a foul word nor a harsh 
one. If he heard a cloak-maker tell an indecent story he 
would look down, smiling and blushing like a girl. 

Formerly he had been employed in his brother’s shop, 
while now he earned his living by soliciting and collecting 
for a life-insurance company. 


CHAPTER IV 


J AKE MINDELS was a devotee of Madame Klesmer, 
the leading Jewish actress of that period, which, by 
the way, was practically the opening chapter in the inter- 
esting history of the Yiddish stage in America. Madame 
Klesmer was a tragedienne and a prima donna at once — a 
usual combination in those days. 

One Friday evening we were in the gallery of her theater. 
The play was an “historical opera,” and she was playing 
the part of a Biblical princess. It was the closing scene 
of an act. The whole company was on the stage, swaying 
sidewise and singing with the princess, her head in a halo 
of electric light in the center. Jake was feasting his large 
blue eyes on her. Presently he turned to me with the air 
of one confiding a secret. “ Wouldn’t you like to kiss her?” 
And, swinging aroimd again, he resumed feasting his blue 
eyes on the princess. 

“I have seen prettier women than she,” I replied. 

“ ’S-sh! Let a fellow listen. She is a dear, all the same. 
You don’t know a good thing when you see it, Levinsky.” 
“Are you in love with her?” 

“ ’S-sh ! Do let me listen. ’ ’ 

When the curtain fell he made me applaud her. There 
were several curtain-calls, during all of which he kept ap- 
plauding her furiously, shouting the prima donna’s name 
at the top of his voice and winking to me imploringly to 
do the same. When quiet had b^n restored at last I 
returned to the subject: 

“Are you in love with her?” 

“ Sure,” he answered, without blushing. “As if a fellow 
could help it. If she let me kiss her little finger I should 
be the happiest man in the world.” 

“And if she let you kiss her cheek?” 

“I should go crazy.” 


159 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 

“And if she let you kiss her lips?” 

“What’s the use asking idle questions?” 

“Would you like to kiss her neck?” 

“You ask me foolish questions.” 

“You are in love with her,” I declared, reflectively. 

“I should say I was.” 

It was a unique sort of love, for he wanted me also to be 
in love with her. 

“If you are not in love with her you must have a heart 
of iron, or else yotir soul is dry as a raisin.” With which he 
took to analyzing the prima donna’s charms, going into 
raptures over her eyes, smile, gestures, manner of opening 
her mouth, and her swing and step as she walked over the 
stage. 

“No, I don’t care for her,” I replied. 

“You are a peculiar fellow.” 

“ If I did fall in love,” I said, by way of meeting him half- 
way, “ I should choose Mrs. Segalovitch. She is a thousand 
times prettier than Mrs. Klesmer.” 

“Tut, tut!” 

Mrs. Segalovitch was certainly prettier than the prima 
donna, but she played unimportant parts, so the notion 
of one’s falling in love with her seemed queer to Jake. 

That night I had an endless chain of dreams, in every one 
of which Madame Klesmer was the central figure. When I 
awoke in the morning I fell in love with her, and was 
overjoyed. 

When I saw Jake Mindels at dinner I said to him, with 
the air of one bringing glad news : 

“ Do you know, I am in love with her?” 

“With whom? With Mrs. Segalovitch?” 

“Oh, pshaw! I had forgotten all about her. I mean 
Madame Klesmer,” I said, self-consciously. 

Somehow, my love for the actress did not interfere with my 
longing thoughts of Matilda. I asked myself no questions. 

And so we went on loving jointly, Jake and I, the com- 
panionship of our passion apparently stimulating our 
romance as companionship at a meal stimulates the appe- 
tite of the diners. Each of us seemed to be infatuated 
with Madame Edesmer. Yet the community of this feel- 
ing, far from arousing mutual jealousy in us, seemed to 
strengthen the ties of our friendship. 

i6o 


MY TEMPLE 


We would hum her songs in duet, recite her lines, com- 
pare notes on our dreams of happiness with her. One day 
we composed a love-letter to her, a long epistle full of 
Biblical and homespun poetry, which we copied jointly, his 
lines alternating with mine, and which we signed: “Yoiir 
two lovelorn slaves whose hearts are panting for a look 
of your star-like eyes. Jacob and David.” We mailed the 
letter without affixing any address. 

The next evening we were in the theater, and when she 
appeared on the stage and shot a glance to the gallery 
Jake nudged me violently. 

“ But she does not know we are in the gallery,” I argued. 
‘‘She must think we are in the orchestra.” 

“Hearts are good guessers.” 

“Guessers nothing.” 

“’S-sh! Let’s listen.” 

Madame Edesmer was pla5dng the part of a girl in a 
modem Russian town. She declaimed her lines, speaking 
like a prophetess in ancient Israel, and I liked it extremely. 
I was fully aware that it was unnatural for a girl in a 
modem Russian town to speak like a prophetess in ancient 
Israel, but that was just why I liked it. I thought it 
perfectly proper that people on the stage should not talk 
as they would off the stage. I thought that this unnatural 
speech of theirs was one of the principal things an audience 
paid for. The only actor who spoke like a human being 
was the comedian, and this, too, seemed to be perfectly 
proper, for a comedian was a fellow who did not take his art 
seriously, and so I thought that this natural talk of his 
was part of his fun-making. I thought it was something 
like a clown burlesquing the Old Testament by reading it, 
not in the ancient intonations of the synago^e, but in the 
plain, conversational accents of every-day life. 

During the intermission, in the course of our talk about 
Madame Klesmer, Jake said: 

“Do you know, Levinsky, I don’t think you really love 
her.” 

“I love her as much as you, and more, too,” I retorted. 

“How much do you love her? Would you walk from 
New York to Philadelphia if she wanted you to do so?” 

“Why should she? What good would it do her?” 

“But suppose she does want it?” 

i6i 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 


“How can I suppose such nonsense?” 

“Well, she might just want to see how much you love 
her.” 

“A nice test, that.” 

“Oh, well, she might just get that kind of notion. 
Women are liable to get any kind of notion, don’t you 
know.” 

“Well, if Madame Klesmer got that kind of notion I 
should tell her to walk to Philadelphia herself.” 

“Then you don’t love her.” 

“ I love her as much as you do, but if she took it into her 
head to make a fool of me I should send her to the eighty 
devils.” 

He winced. “And you call that love, don’t you?” he 
said, with a sneer in the comer of his pretty mouth. “As 
for me, I should walk to Boston, if she wanted me to.” 

“Even if she did not promise to let you kiss her?” 

“Even if she did not.” 

“And if she did?” 

“I should walk to Chicago.” 

“And if she promised to be your mistress?” 

“Oh, what’s the use talking that way?” he protested, 
blushing. 

“Aren’t you shy! A regular bride-to-be, I declare.” 

“Stop!” he said, coloring once again. 

It dawned upon me that he was probably chaste, and, 
searching his face with a mocking look, I said: 

“I bet you you are still innocent.” 

“Leave me alone, please,” he retorted, softly. 

“I have hit it, then,” I importuned him, with a great 
sense of my own superiority. 

“ Do let me alone, will you?” 

“ I just want you to tell me whether you are innocent or 
not.” 

“ It’s none of your business.’* 

“Of course you are.” 

“And if I am? Is it a disgrace?’* 

“Who says it is?” 

I desisted. He became more attractive than ever to me. 

Nevertheless, I made repeated attempts to deprave him. 
His chastity bothered me. The idea of breaking it down 
became an irresistible temptation. I would ridicule him 
162 


MY TEMPLE 


for a sissy, appeal to him in the name of his health, beg 
him as one does for a personal favor, all in vain. 

He spoke better English than I, with more ease, and in 
that pretty basso of his which I envied. He had never read 
Dickens or any other English author, but he was familiar 
with some subjects to which I was a stranger. He was well 
grounded in arithmetic, knew some geography, and now, 
with a view of qualifying for the study of medicine, he was 
preparing, with the aid of a private teacher, for the Regents’ 
examination in algebra, geometry, English composition, 
American and English history. I thought he did not study 
“deeply” enough, that he took more real interest in his 
collars and neckties, the shine of his shoes, or the hang of 
his trousers than he did in his algebra or history. 

By his cleanliness and tidiness he reminded me of 
Naphtali, which, indeed, had something to do with my 
attachment for him. My relations toward him echoed with 
the feelings I used to have for the reticent, omniscient boy 
of Abner’s Court, and with the hoarse, studious young 
Talmudist with whom I would “famish in company.” 
He had neither Naphtali ’s brains nor his individuality, 
yet I looked up to him and was somewhat under his in- 
fluence. I adopted many of the English phrases he was 
in the habit of using and tried to imitate his way of dressing. 
As a consequence, he would sometimes assume a patroniz- 
ing tone with me, addressing me with a good-natured sneer 
which I liked in spite of myself. 

We made a compact to speak nothing but English, and, 
to a considerable extent, we kept it. 


CHAPTER V 


A FEW weeks of employment were succeeded by an- 
other period of enforced idleness. I took up arith- 
metic, but reading was still a great passion with me. My 
mornings and forenoons during that slack season were 
mostly spent over Dickens or Thackeray. 

I now lived in a misshapen attic room which I rented 
of an Irish family in what was then a Gentile neighborhood. 
I had chosen that street for the English I had expected 
to hear around me. I had lived more than two months in 
that attic, and almost the only English I heard from my 
neighbors were the few words my landlady would say to 
me when I paid her my weekly rent. Yet, somehow, the 
place seemed helpftil to me, as though its very atmosphere 
exuded a feeling for the language I was so eager to master. 
I made all sorts of advances to the Irish family, all sorts of 
efforts to get into social relations with them, all to no 
purpose. Finally, one evening I had a real conversation 
with one of my landlady’s sons. My window gave me 
trouble and he came up to put it in working order for me. 
We talked of his work and of mine. I told him of my plans 
about going to college. He was interested and I thought 
him charmingly courteous and sociable. He remained 
about an hour and a half in my room. When he had de- 
parted I was in high spirits. I seemed to feel the progress 
my English had made in that horn and a half. 

My bed was so placed that by lying prone, diagonally 
across it, my head toward the window and my feet sus- 
pended in the air, I would get excellent daylight. So this 
became my favorite posture when I read in the daytime. 
Thus, lying on my stomach, with a novel imder my eyes 
and the dictionary by my side, I would devour scores of 
pages. In a few weeks, often reading literally day and 
night, I read through Nicholas Nickleby and Vanity Fair. 
164 


MY TEMPLE 


Thackeray’s masterpiece did not strike me as being in the 
same class with anything by Dickens. It seemed to me 
that anybody in command of bookish English ought to 
be able to turn out a work like Vanity Fair^ where men and 
things were so simple and so natiu*al that they impressed 
me like people and things I had known. Indeed, I had a 
lurking feeling that I, too, could do it, after a while at 
least. On the other hand, Nicholas Nickleby and Dombey 
and Son were so full of extraordinary characters, unexpected 
wit, outbursts of beautiful rhetoric, and other wonderful 
things, that their author appealed to me as something more 
than a human being. And yet deep down in my heart I 
enjoyed Thackeray more than I did Dickens. 

It was at the East Side branch of the Yoimg Men’s 
Hebrew Association that I obtained my books. It was a 
sort of university settlement in which educated men and 
women from up-town acted as “workers.” The advice 
these would give me as to my reading, their kindly manner, 
their native English, and, last but not least, the flattering 
way in which they would speak of my intellectual aspira- 
tions, led me to spend many an hour in the place. The 
great thing was to hear these American-bom people speak 
their native tongue and to have them hear me speak it. 
It was the same as in the case of the chat I had with the 
son of my Irish landlady. Every time I had occasion to 
spend five or ten minutes in their company I would seem 
to be conscious of a perceptible improvement in my 
English. 

&me days I wotdd be so carried away by my reading that 
I never opened my arithmetic. At other times I would 
drift into an arithmetical mood and sit up all night doing 
problems. 

When I happened to be in raptures over some book I 
would pester Jake with lengthy accounts of it, dwelling on 
the chapters I had read last and trying to force my ex^ ta- 
tion upon him. As a rule, he was bored, but sometimes he 
would become interested in the plot or in some romantic 
scene. 

One evening, as we were discussing love in general, I said: 

“Love is the greatest thing in the world.” 

“Sure it is,” he answered. “ But if you love and are not 
loved in return it is nothing but agony.” 

165 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 

‘‘Even then it is sweet,” I rejoined, reflectively, the image 
of Matilda before me. 

“ How can pain be sweet?” 

“But it can.” 

“ If you were really in love with Madame Klesmer you 
wouldn’t think so.” 

“I love her as much as you do.” 

“You are always saying you do, but you don’t.” 

“Yes, I do.” And suddenly lapsing into a confidential 
tone, I questioned him : “By the way, Jake, is this the first 
time you have ever been in love?” 

“Why?” 

“I just want to know. Is it?” 

“What difference does it make? Have you ever been in 
love before?” 

“What difference does that make? If you answer my 
question I shall answer yours.” 

“Well, then, I have never been in love before.” 

“Andlhave.” 

He was intensely interested, and I confided my love story 
in him, which served to strengthen our friendship still 
further. When I concluded my narrative he said, thought- 
fully: 

“Of course you don’t love Madame Klesmer. I tell 
you what, Levinsky, you are still in love with Matilda.” 

I made no answer. 

“Anyhow, you don’t love Madame Klesmer.” 

This time he said it without reproach. Once I was in 
love with somebody else I was excused. 

The next “season” came around. I was a full-fledged 
helper now, and, according to the customary arrangement, 
I received thirty per cent, of what Joe received for my work. 
This brought me from twenty to twenty-five dollars a week, 
quite an overwhelming sum, according to my then standard 
of income and expenditures. I saved about fifteen dollars 
a week. I shall never forget the day when my capital 
reached the round figure of one himdred dollars. I was in a 
flutter. When I looked at the passers-by in the street I 
would say to myself, “These people have no idea that I 
am worth a hundred dollars.” 

Another thing I was ever conscious of was the fact that 
1 66 


MY TEMPLE 

I had earned the h^dred dollars by my work. There was 
a touch of solemnity in my mood, as though I had per- 
formed some feat of valor or rendered some great service 
to the community. I was impelled to convey this feeling 
to Jake, but when I attempted to put it into words it was 
somehow lost in a haze and what I said was something quite 
prosaic. 

“Guess how much I have in the savings-bank?” I began. 

‘ ‘ I haven’t any idea. How much ? ’ ’ 

“Just one himdred.” 

“Really?” 

“Honest. But, then, what does it amount to, after all? 
Of course, it is pleasant to feel that you have a trade and 
that you know how to keep a dollar, don’t you know.” 

So far from endearing me to the cloak trade, as might 
have been expected, the hundred dollars killed at one 
stroke all the interest I had taken in it. It lent reality 
to my vision of college. Cloak-making was now nothing but 
a temporary round of dreary toil, an imavoidable stepping- 
stone to loftier occupations. 

Another year and I should be a fully developed mechanic, 
working on my own hook — that is, as the immediate em- 
ployee of some manufacturer or contractor. “ I shall soon 
be earning forty or fifty dollars a week,” I would muse. 
“At that rate I shall save up plenty of money in much less 
time than I expected. I shall spend as little as possible and 
study as hard as possible.” 

The Regents’ examinations were not exacting in those 
days. I could have prepared to qualify for admission to a 
school of medicine, law, or civil engineering in a very short 
time. But I aimed higher. I knew that many of the pro- 
fessional men on the East Side, and, indeed, everywhere 
else in the United States, were people of doubtful intellec- 
tual equipment, while I was ambitious to be a cultured man 
“in the European way.” There was an odd confusion of 
ideas in my mind. On the one hand, I had a notion that to 
“become an American” was the only tangible form of 
becoming a man of culture (for did not I regard the most 
refined and learned European as a “greenhorn”?); on 
the other hand, the impression was deep in me that 
American education was a cheap machine-made product. 

167 


CHAPTER VI 


OLLEGE ! The sound was forever buzzing in my ear. 



The seven letters were forever floating before my 


eyes. They were a magic group, a magic whisper. Matilda 
was to hear of me as a college man. What would she say? 

“ Wbat do you want City College for?’' Jake would argue. 
“Why not take up medicine at once?” 

“Once I am to be an educated man I want to be the 
genuine article,” I would reply. 

Every bit of new knowledge I acquired aroused my 
enthusiasm. I was in a continuous turmoil of exultation. 

My plan of campaign was to keep working tmtil I had 
saved up six hundred dollars, by which time I was to be 
eligible to admission to the junior class of the College of 
the City of New York, commonly known as City College, 
where tuition is free. The six hundred dollars was to last 
me two years — that is, till graduation, when I might take 
up medicine, engineering, or law. During the height of the 
cloak season I might find it possible to replenish my fimds 
by an occasional few days at the sewing-machine, or else 
it ought not to be difficult to support myself by joining the 
army of private instructors who taught English to our 
workingmen at their homes. 

The image of the modest college building was constantly 
before me. More than once I went a considerable dis- 
tance out of my way to pass the comer of Lexington Avenue 
and Twenty-third Street, where that edifice stood. I 
would pause and gaze at its red, ivy-clad walls, mysterious 
high windows, humble spires; I would stand watching the 
students on the campus and around the great doors, and 
go my way, with a heart full of reverence, envy, and hope, 
with a heart full of quiet ecstasy. 

It was not merely a place in which I was to fit myself 
for the battle of life, nor merely one in which I was going to* 


1 68 


MY TEMPLE 


acquire knowledge. It was a symbol of spiritual promo- 
tion as well. University-bred people were the real no- 
bility of the world. A college diploma was a certificate of 
moral as well as intellectual aristocracy. 

My old religion had gradually fallen to pieces, and if 
its place was taken by something else, if there was some- 
thing that appealed to the better man in me, to what was 
purest in my thoughts and most sacred in my emotions, 
that something was the red, church-like structure on the 
southeast comer of Lexington Avenue and Twenty-third 
Street. 

It was the synagogue of my new life. Nor is this merely 
a figure of speech: the building really appealed to me as a 
temple, as a House of Sanctity, as we call the ancient Temple 
of Jemsalem. At least that was the term I would fondly 
apply to it, years later, in my retrospective breedings upon 
the first few years of my life in America. 

I was impatiently awaiting the advent of the slack 
season, and when it came at last I applied myself ex- 
clusively to the study of subjects required for admission 
to college. To accelerate matters I engaged, as my in- 
structor in mathematics and geography, the son of our 
tough-looking presser. I paid him twenty-five cents an 
hour. 

My geography lessons were rapidly dispelling the haze 
that had enshrouded the universe from me. I beheld the 
globe hanging in space, a vast independent world and yet a 
mere speck among countless myriads of other worlds. Its 
rotations were so vivid in my mind that I seemed to hear it 
hum as it spun round and round its axis. The phenomena 
producing day and night and the four seasons were as real 
to me as the things that took place in my restaurant. 
The earth was being disclosed to my mental vision as a 
whole and in detail. Order was coming out of chaos. 
Continents, seas, islands, mountains, rivers, countries, were 
defining themselves out of a misty jiimble of meaningless 
names. Light was breaking all around me. Life was 
becoming clearer. I was broadening out. I was overborne 
by a sense of my growing perspicacity. 

My keenest pleasure was to do geometrical problems, 
preferably such as contained puzzles in construction. On 
one occasion I sat up all night and far into the following day 
12 169 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 


over a riddle of this kind. It was about 2 o’clock when I 
dressed and went to lunch, which was also my breakfast. 
The problem was still unsolved. I hurried back home as 
soon as I had finished my meal, went at the problem again, 
and did not let go until it surrendered. Odd as it may 
seem, I found a certain kind of similarity between the liu*e 
of these purely mental exercises and the appeal of music. 
In both cases I was piqued and harassed by a personified 
mystery. If a tune ran in my mind it would appear as 
though somebody, I knew not who, was saying something, 
I knew not what. What was he saying? Who was he? 
What had happened to him? Was he reciting some 
grievance, bemoaning some loss, or threatening vengeance? 
What was he nagging me about? Questions such as these 
would keep pecfing at my heart, and this pain, this ex- 
cruciating curiosity, I would call keen enjo5nnent. 

In like manner every difficult mathematical problem 
seemed to shelter some unknown fellow who took pleasiu*e 
in teasing me and daring me to find him. It was the same 
mischievous fellow, in fact, who used to laugh in my face 
when I had a difficult bit of Talmud to unravel. 

“Why, geometry is even deeper than Talmud,’’ I once 
exclaimed to Jake. 

“Do you think so?’’ he answered, indifferently. 

“I think an interesting geometrical problem is more 
delicious than the best piece of meat.’’ 

“Why don’t you live on problems, then? Why spend 
money on dinners?’’ 

“Smart boy, aren't you?” 

“Is doing problems as sweet as being in love?” he de- 
manded, with sheepish earnestness. 

“You are in love with Madame Klesmer. You ought to 
know.” 

He made no answer. 

On the day when I began these studies I had thirty-six 
dollars besides the hundred which I kept in the savings- 
bank. Of this I was now spending, including tuition fees, 
less than six dollars a week. Every time I changed a 
dollar my heart literally sank within me. Finally, when my 
cash was all gone, I borrowed some money of Joe, my 
“rabbi” at the art of cloak-making. Breaking the round 
sum total of my savings-bank account was out of the 

170 


MY TEMPLE 


question. Joe advanced me money more than cheerfully. 
He was glad to have me in his debt as a pledge of my con- 
tinuing to work for him. His motive was obvious, and yet 
I went on borrowing of him rather than draw upon my 
bank account. 

One day it crossed my mind that it would be a handsome 
thing if I looked up Gitelson and paid him the ten dollars 
I owed him. It was sweet to picture myself telling him 
how much his ten dollars had done and was going to do for 
me. I was impatient to call on him, and so I borrowed ten 
dollars of Joe and betook myself to the factory where I had 
visited Gitelson several times before. As he was a sample- 
maker, his work knew no seasons. When I called at that 
factory I found that he had given up his job there, that he 
had married and established a small custom-tailor shop 
somewhere up-town, nobody seemed to know where. Joe 
had not even heard of his marriage. Meanwhile, my 
enthusiasm for paying him his debt was gone, and I was 
rather glad that I had not found him. 

It was the middle of July. The great “winter season” 
was developing. I felt perfectly competent to make a 
whole garment unaided. It was doubtful, however, 
whether I should be readily accepted as an independent 
mechanic in the shop where I was employed now and 
where one was in the habit of regarding me as a mere ap- 
prentice. So I was determined to seek employment else- 
where. Joe was suspicious. Not that I betrayed my 
plans in any way. He took them for granted. And so he 
visited me every day, on all sorts of pretexts, dined me 
and wined me (if the phrase may be applied to a soda- 
water dinner), and watched my every step. 

Finally I wearied of it all, and one afternoon, as we 
were seated in the restamrant, I picked a quarrel with 
him. 

“I don’t want your dinners,” I burst out, “and I don’t 
want to be watched by you as if I were a recruit in the 
Russian army and you were my ‘little uncle.’ I’ll pay 
you what I owe you and leave me alone.” 

“As if I were imeasy about those few dollars!” he said,, 
ingratiatingly. 

“I know you are not. That’s just it.” 

171 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 

He took fire. “What am I after, then? You think I 
get rich on your work, don’t you?” 

Our altercation waxed violent. At one point he was 
about to lapse into a conciliatory tone again, but his 
dignity prevailed. 

“I would not keep you if you begged me,” he declared. 
“ I hate to deal with an ingrate. But I want my money at 
once.” 

“ I shall pay it to you when work begins.” 

“No, sirrah. I want it at once.” 

An ugly scene followed. He seized me by my coat lapels 
and threatened to have me arrested. 

Finally the restaurant-keeper and Gussie, the homely 
finisher girl whom we all respected, made peace between us, 
and things were arranged more or less amicably. 

I obtained employment in an “inside” place, a factory 
owned by twin brothers named Manheimer. 

I was in high feather. My sense of advancement and 
independence reminded me of the days when I had just 
been graduated from the Talmudic Academy and went on 
studying as an “ independent scholar. ’ ’ I had not, however, 
begun to work in my new place when a general strike of 
the trade was declared. 


CHAPTER VII 


T he Cloak-makers* Union had been a weak, insig- 
nificant organization, but at the call for a general 
strike it suddenly burst into life. There was a great rush 
for membership cards. Everybody seemed to be en- 
thusiastic, ftdl of fight. To me, however, the strike was a 
sheer calamity. I laid it all to my own hard luck. It 
seemed as though the trouble had been devised for the 
express purpose of preventing me from being promoted to 
full pay; for the express puipose of upsetting my financial 
calculations in connection with my college plans. Every- 
body was saying that prices were outrageously low, that 
the manufacturers were taking advantage of the weakness 
of the union, and that they must be brought to terms. All 
this was lost upon me. The question of prices did not in- 
terest me, because the wages I was going to receive were 
by far the highest I had ever been paid. But the main 
thing was that I looked upon the whole business of making 
cloaks as a temporary occupation. My mind was full of 
my books and my college dreams. All I wanted was to 
start the “season” as soon as possible, to save up the 
expected sum, and to reach the next period of freedom from 
physical toil, when I should be able to spend day and night 
on my studies again. But going to work as a stnke-breaker 
was out of the question. A new kind of Public Opinion 
had suddenly spnmg up among the cloak-makers: a man 
who did not belong to the union was a traitor, worse than 
an apostate, worse than the worst of criminals. 

And so, feeling like a school-boy in Antomir when he is 
made to fiunish the very rod with which he is to be chas- 
tised, I went to the headquarters of the union, paid my 
initiation fee, and became a member. It was on a Friday 
afternoon. The secretaries of the organization were seated 
at a long table in the basement of a meeting-room building 

173 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 

on Rivington Street. The basement and the street outside 
were swarming with cloak-makers. A number of mass 
meetings had been arranged to take place in several halls, 
with well-known Socialists for spe^ers, but I had not 
even the curiosity to attend them. When some of my 
shopmates reproached me for my indifference I said, 
sullenly: 

“ I’ve joined the union. What more do you want?” 

One of them, a Talmudist like myself, spoke of capital 
and labor, of the injustice of the existing economic order. 
He had recently, through the strike, been converted to 
Socialism. He made a fiery appeal to me. He spoke 
with the exaltation of a new proselyte. But his words fell 
on deaf ears. I had no mind for anything but my college 
studies. 

” Do you think it right that millions of people should toil 
and live in misery so that a number of idlers might roll in 
luxury?” he pleaded. 

“I haven’t made the world, nor can I mend it,” was my 
retort. 

The manufacturers yielded almost every point. The 
‘‘season” began with a rush. 

My pay-envelope for the first week contained thirty- 
two dollars and some cents. I knew the imion price, of 
coiu*se, and I had figured out the sum before I received it, 
yet when I beheld the two figures on the envelope the blood 
smrged to my head. Thirty-two dollars! Why, that 
meant sixty-four rubles! I was tempted to write Naphtali 
about it. 

The next week brought me an even fatter envelope. I 
worked sixteen hours a day. Reading and studying had to 
be suspended till October. I lived on five dollars a week. 
My savings, and with them my sense of my own im- 
portance in the world, grew apace. As there was no time 
to go to the savings-bank, I had to carry what I deemed a 
great sum on my person (in a money-belt that I had im- 
provised for the purpose). This was a constant source of 
anxiety as well as of joy. No matter how absorbed I 
might have been in my work or in thought, the consciousness 
of having that wad of paper money with me was never 
wholly absent from my mind. It loomed as a badge of 
174 


MY TEMPLE 


omnipotence. I felt in the presence of Luck, which was a 
living spirit, a goddess. I was mostly grave. The frivol- 
ities of the other men in the factory seemed so fatuous, so 
revolting. A great sense of security and self-confidence 
swelled my heart. When I walked through the American 
streets I would feel at home in them, far more so than I 
had ever felt before. At the same time danger was con- 
stantly hovering about me — ^the danger of the street crowds 
seizing that magic wad from me. 

The image of the college building loomed as a bride-elect 
of mine. But that, somehow, did not seem to have any- 
thing to do with my money-belt, as though I expected to go 
to college without encroaching upon my savings — a case of 
eating the cake and having it. 

The cloak-makers were so busy they had no time to 
attend meetings, and being little accustomed to method 
and discipline, they suffered their organization to melt 
away. By the time the “season” came to a close the 
union was scarcely stronger than it had been before the 
strike. As there was no work now, and no prices to fix, 
one did not miss its protection. 

The number of men employed in the trade in those 
years did not exceed seven thousand. The industry was 
still in its infancy. 

I resumed my studies with a passion amoimting to a 
frenzy. I would lay in a supply of coarse rye bread, cheese, 
and salmon to last me two or even three days, and never 
leave my lair during that length of time. I dined at the 
Delancey Street restaurant every third or fourth day, and 
did not go to the theater unless Jake was particularly in- 
sistent. But then I religiously attended Felix Adler’s 
ethical-cultiu*e lectures, at Chickering Hall, on Stmday 
mornings. I valued them for their English rather than for 
an3rthing else, but their spirit, reinforced by the effect of 
organ music and the general atmosphere of the place, would 
send my sold soaring. These gatherings and my prospective 
alma mater appealed to me as being of the same order of 
things, of the same world of refined ways, new thoughts, 
noble interests. 

If I came across a street faker and he spoke with a foreign 

175 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 


accent I would pass on; if, however, his English struck 
me as that of a “real American,” I would pause and listen 
to his “ lecture,” sometimes for more than an hour. People 
who were bom to speak English were superior beings. 
Even among fallen women I would seek those who were real 
Americans. 


CHAPTER VIII 


I WAS reading Pendennis. The prospect of returning to 
work was a hideous vision. The high wages in store for 
me had lost their magnetism. I often wondered whether 
I might not be able to secure some pupils in English or 
Hebrew, and drop cloak-making at once. I dreamed of en- 
listing the interest of a certain Maecenas, a German- 
American Jew who financed many a struggling college 
student of the Ghetto. Thoughts of a “college match’’ 
would flash through my mind — that is, of becoming engaged 
to some girl who earned good wages and was willing to 
support me through college. This form of matrimonial 
arrangement, which has been mentioned in an earlier chap- 
ter, is not uncommon among our immigrants. Alliances of 
this sort naturally tend to widen the intellectual chasm 
between the two parties to the contract, and often result 
in some of the tragedies or comedies that fill the swift- 
flowing life of American Ghettos. But the ambition to 
be the wife of a doctor, lawyer, or dentist is too strong 
in some of our working-girls to be quenched by the dangers 
involved. 

One of the yoimg women I had in mind was Gussie, the 
cloak-finisher mentioned above, who saved for a marriage 
portion too energetically to make a marriage. She was a 
good girl, and no fool, either, and I thought to myself 
that she would make me a good wife, even if she was plain 
and had a washed-out appearance and was none too young. 
I was too passionately in love with my prospective alma 
mater to care whether I could love my fiancee or not. 

“I have a fellow for you,” I said to Gussie, under the 
guise of pleasantry, meeting her in the street one day. 
“Something fine.” 

“Who is it — yourself?” she asked, quickly. 

“You have guessed it right.” 

177 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 

“Have I? Then tell your fellow to go to all the black 
devils.’* 

“Why?” 

“Because.” 

“If I could go to college — ” 

“You want me to pay your bills, do you?” 

“Wouldn’t you like to be the wife of a doctor? You 
would take rides in my carriage — ” 

“You mean the other way around: you would ride in my 
carriage and I should have to start a breach-of-promise 
case against ‘Dr. Levinsky.’ You’ll have to look for a 
bigger fool than I,” she concluded, with a smile. 

It was an attractive smile, full of good nature and common 
sense. A smile of this kind often makes a homely face 
pretty. Gussie’s did not. The light it shed only served 
to publish her ugliness. But I did not care. The infatua- 
tion I had brought with me from Antomir had not yet com- 
pletely faded out, anyhow. And so I harbored vague 
thoughts that some day, when I saw fit to press my suit, 
Gussie might yield. 

I was getting impatient. The idea of having to go back 
to work became more hateful to me every day. I was in 
despair. Finally I decided to consider my career as a 
clo^-maker closed; to cut my expenses to the veriest 
minimum, to live on my savings, look for some source of 
income that would not interfere with my studies, take the 
college examination as soon as I was ready for it, and let 
the future take care of itself. 

In the heart of the Jewish neighborhood I found an attic 
for half of what I was paying the Irish family. Moreover, 
it was a neighborhood where everything was cheaper than 
in any other part of New York, the only one in which it was 
possible for a man to have a “room” to himself and live on 
four dollars a week. So I moved to that attic, a step for 
which, as I now think of it, I cannot but be thankful to fate, 
for it brought me in touch with a quaint, simple man who 
is my warm friend to this day, perhaps the dearest friend 
I have had in America. 

The house was a rickety, two-story frame structure, 
the smallest and oldest-loolang on the block. Its ground 
floor was used as a tailoring shop by the landlord himself, a 
white-headed giant of a man whom I cannot recall other- 
178 


MY TEMPLE 


wise than as smiling wistfully and sighing. His name was 
Esrah Nodelman. His wife, who was a dwarf beside him, 
ruled him with an iron hand. 

Mrs. Nodelman gave me breakfasts, and I soon felt 
like one of the family. She was a veritable chatter- 
box, her great topic of conversation being her son Meyer, 
upon whom she doted, and his American-bom wife, whose 
name she scarcely ever uttered without a malediction. 
She told me how she, Meyer's mother, her sister, and a 
niece had turned out their pockets and pawned their 
jewelry to help Meyer start in business as a clothing- 
manufacturer. 

“He’s now worth a hundred thousand dollars — ^may no 
evil eye hit him,’’ she said. “He’s a good fellow, a lump 
of gold. If God had given him a better wife (may the 
plague carry off the one he has) he would be all right. 
She has a meat-ball for a face, the face of a murderess. 
She always was a murderess, but since Meyer became a 
manufacturer there is no talking to her at all. The airs 
she is giving herself! And all because she was bom in 
America, the frog that she is.’’ 

I soon made Meyer’s acquaintance. He was a dark man 
of forty, with Oriental sadness in his eyes. To lend his face 
capitalistic dignity he had recently grown a pair of side- 
whiskers, but one day, a week or two after I met him, he 
saw a circus poster of “Jo Jo, the human dog,” and then he 
hastened to discard them. 

“I don’t want to look like a man-dog,” he explained, 
gaily, to his mother, who was impleasantly surprised by the 
change. 

“Man-dog nothing,” she protested, addressing herself 
to me. “He was as handsome as gold in those whiskers. 
He looked like a regular monarch in them.” And then to 
him : “I suppose it was that treasure of a wife you have who 
told you to have them taken off. It’s a lucky thing she 
does not order you to have your foolish head taken off.” 

“You better shut up, mamma,” he said, sternly. And 
she did. 

He called to see his parents quite frequently, sometimes 
with some of his children, but never with his wife, at least 
not while I lived there. 

Crassly illiterate save for his ability to read some Hebrew, 
179 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 

without knowing the meaning of the words, he enjoyed a 
cx)nsiderable degree of native intellectual alertness, and 
in his crude, untutored way was a thinker. 

One evening he took to quizzing me on my plans, partly 
in Yiddish and partly in broken English, which he uttered 
with a strong Cockney accent, a relic of the several years 
he had spent in London. 

“And what will you do after you finish (he pronounced 
it “fiendish”) college?” he inquired, with a touch of de- 
rision. 

“I shall take up some higher things,” I rejoined, re- 
luctantly. 

“And what do you call ‘higher things’?” he pursued 
in his quizzical, browbeating way. “Are you going to be 
a philosopher?” 

“Yes, I shall be a doctor of philosophy,” I answered, 
frostily. 

“What’s that? You want to be both a doctor and a 
philosopher? But you know the saying, ‘Many trades — 
few blessings.’ ” 

“I am not going to be a doctor and a philosopher, but a 
doctor of philosophy,” I said, with a sneer. 

“And how much will you make?” 

‘ ‘ Oh, let him alone, Meyer, ’ ’ his mother intervened. “He 
is an educated fellow, and he doesn’t care for money at all.” 

“Doesn’t care for money, eh?” the younger Nodelman 
jeered. 

“ Do you think money is really everything?” I shot back. 
“One might be able to find a thing or two which could 
not be bought with it.” 

“Not even at Ridley’s,”^ he jested, but he was mani- 
festly beginning to resent my attitude and to take our pas- 
sage at arms rather seriously. 

“Not even at Ridley’s. You can’t get brains there, can 
you?” 

“Well, I never learned to write, but I have a learned 
fellow in my office. He’s chuck ftdl of learning and that sort 
of thing. Yet who is working for whom — I for him or he 
for me? So much for education — ^for the stuff that’s in a 
man’s head. And now let’s take charity — the stuff that’s 

^ A well-known department store in those days. 
i8o 


MY TEMPLE 


in a man’s heart. I don’t care what you say, but of what 
use is a good heart unless he has some jinglers^ to go with 
it? You can’t shove your hand into your heart and pull 
out a few dollars for a poor friend, can you? You can 
help him out of your pocket, though — that is, provided it 
is not empty.” 

My bewigged little landlady was feasting her eyes on her 
son. 

Meyer went on with his argument: “What is a man 
without capital? Nothing! Nobody cares for him. He 
is like a beast. A beast can’t talk, and he can’t. ‘ Money 
talks,’ as the Americans say.” 

His words and manner put me in a socialist mood. He 
was hateful to me. I listened in morose silence. He felt 
piqued, and he wilted. The ginger went out of his voice. 
My taciturnity continued, until, gradually, he edged over 
to my side of the controversy, taking up the cudgels for 
education and spiritual excellence with the same force with 
which he had a short while ago tried to set forth their 
futility. 

“Of course it’s nice to be educated,” he said. “A man 
without writing is just like a deaf mute. What’s the dif- 
ference ? The man who can’t write has speech in his mouth, 
but he is dumb with his fingers, while the deaf mute he 
can’t talk with his mouth, but he can do so with his fingers. 
Both should be pitied. I do like education. Of course I 
do. Don’t I send my boy to college? I am an ignorant 
boor myself, because my father was poor, but my children 
shall have all the wisdom they can pile in. We Jews have 
too many enemies in the world. Everybody is ready to 
shed otu* blood. So where would we be if many of our 
people were not among the wisest of the wise? Why, they 
would just crush us like so many flies. When I see an 
educated Jew I say to myself, ‘That’s it!’” 

When he heard of my ambition to give lessons he said: 

“I tell you what. I’ll be your first pupil. I mean it.” 
he added, seriously. 

My heart gave a leap. “Very well. I’ll try my best,” 
I replied. 

“Mind you, I don’t want to be a philosopher. I just 

1 Coin, money. 
i8i 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 

want you to fix me up in reading, writing, and figuring a 
little bit. That’s all. You don’t think it’s too late, do 
you?” 

“Too late!” I chuckled, hysterically. “Why?” 

“I can sign or indorse a check, and, thank God, for a 
good few dollars, too — but when it comes to fixing in the 
stuffing, there is trouble. I know how to write the figures, 
but not the words. I can write almost any number. If 
I was worth all the money I can put down in figures I 
should be richer than Vanderbilt. ’ ’ 

To insure secrecy I was to give him his lessons in my 
attic room. 

“ I don’t want my kids to know their pa is learning like 
a little boy, don’t you know,” he explained. “American 
kids have not much respect for their fathers, anyhow.” 

As a preliminary to his initial lesson Nodelman offered 
to show me what he could do. When I brought pen and 
ink and some paper he cleared his throat, screwed up a 
solemn mien, and took hold of the pen. In trying to shake 
off some of the ink he sent splashes all over the table. At 
last he proceeded to write his name. He handled the pen 
as he would a pitchfork. It was quite a laborious proceed- 
ing, and his first attempt was a fizzle, for he reached the end 
of the paper before he finished the “m” in Nodelman. 
He tried again, and this time he was successful, but it was 
three minutes before the task was completed. It left him 
panting and wiping his ink-stained fingers on his hair. 

“A man who has to work as hard as that over his sig- 
nature has no business to be seen among decent people,” 
he said, with sincere disgust. “I ought to be a horse- 
driver, not a manufacttuer.” 

So speaking, he submitted his signature for my inspection, 
without, however, letting go of the sheet. 

“Tell me how rotten it is,” he said, bashfully. 

When I protested that it was not “rotten” at all he 
gmnted something to the effect that once I was to instruct 
him he would expect to pay me, not for empty compli- 
ments, but for the truth. At this he lighted a match and 
applied it to the sheet of paper containing his signature. 

“A signature is no joke,” he explained, as he watched 
it bum. “Put a few words and some figures on top of it 
and it is a note, as good as cash. When a fellow is a beggar 
182 


MY TEMPLE 

he has nothing to fear, but when he is in business he had 
better be careful.” 

When he asked me how much I was going to charge him 
and I said twenty-five cents an hour, he smiled. 

“I’ll pay you more than that. You just try your best 
for me, will you?” 

At the end of the first week he handed me two dollars 
for three lessons. 

I was the happiest man in New York that day. If I 
had had to choose between earning ten dollars a week in 
tuition fees and a himdred dollars as wages or profits I 
should, without the slightest hesitation, have decided in 
favor of the ten dollars, and now, behold! that coveted 
source of income seemed nearer at hand than I had dared 
forecast. Once a start had been made, I might expect to 
procure other pupils, even if they could not afford to pay 
so lavish a price as two dollars for three lessons. 

But alas! My happiness was not to last long. 

I was giving Nodelman his fifth lesson. We were spelling 
out some syllables in a First Reader. Presently he grew 
absent-minded and then, suddenly pushing the school-book 
from him, said: 

“Too late! Too late! Those black little dots won’t 
get through my forehead. It has grown too hard for them, 
I suppose.” 

I attempted to reassure him, but in vain. 

When the next cloak season came I slunk back to work. 
I felt degraded. But I earned high wages and my good 
spirits soon returned. I firmly made up my mind, come 
what might, to take the college-entrance examination the 
very next fall. I expected to have four hundred dollars by 
then, but I was determined to enter college even if I had 
much less. “I sha’n’t starve,” I said to myself . “And, 
if I don’t get enough to eat, hunger is nothing new to me.” 

The very firmness of my purpose was a source of en- 
couragement and joy. 




'>j ;< • V, - , ' . , ■’. ,' ■ '/ .‘ ' ! 






BOOK VIII 

THE DESTRUCTION OF MY 
TEMPLE 



CHAPTER I 


N unimportant accident, a mere trifle, suddenly gave 



a new turn to the trend of events changing the char- 
acter of my whole life. 

It was the middle of April. The spring season was over, 
but Manheimer Brothers, the firm by which I was em- 
ployed, had received heavy duplicate orders for silk coats, 
and, considering the time of the year, we were imusually 
busy. One day, at the lunch hour, as I was opening a 
sm^ bottle of milk, the bottle slipped out of my hand 
and its contents were spilled over the floor and some silk 
coats. 

Jeff Manheimer, one of the twins, happened to be near 
me at the moment, and a disagreeable scene followed. But 
first a word or two about Jeff Manheimer. 

He was the “inside man’* of the firm, having charge of 
the mechanical end of the business as well as of the offices. 
He was of German parentage, but of American birth. 
Bald-headed as a melon and with a tendency to cor- 
pulence, he had the back of a man of forty-five and the 
front of a man of twenty-five. He was a vivacious fellow, 
one of those who are indefatigable in abortive attempts at 
being witty, one of his favorite puns being that we ‘ ‘ Russians 
were not rushin’ at all,” that we were a “slow lot.” Al- 
together he treated us as an inferior race, often lecturing 
us upon our lack of manners. 

I detested him. 

When he saw me drop the bottle of milk he flew into a 
rage. 

“Eh!” he shouted, “did you think this was a kitchen? 
Can’t you take better care of things?” As he saw me 
crouching and wiping the floor and the coats with my 
handkerchief he added : “ You might as well take those coats 
home. The price will be charged against you. That ’ll 


187 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 

make you remember that this is not a bam, but a factory. 
Where were you brought up? Among Indians?” 

Some of my shopmates tittered obsequiously, which en- 
couraged Manheimer to further sarcasm. 

“Why, he doesn’t even know how to handle a bottle 
of milk. Did you ever see such a lobster?” 

At this there was an explosion of merriment. ^ 

“A lobster!” one of the tailors repeated, relishingly. 

I could have murdered him as well as Manheimer. 

My head was swimming. I was about to say something 
insulting to my employer, to get up and leave the place 
demonstratively. But I said to myself that I should soon 
be through with this kind of life for good, and I held my- 
self in leash. 

Two or three minutes later I sat at a machine, eating 
my milkless Itmch. I was trying to forget the incident, 
trying to think of something else, but in vain. Man- 
heimer ’s derision, especially the word “lobster,” was ring- 
ing in my ear. 

He passed out of the shop, but ten or fifteen minutes 
later he came back, and as I saw him walk down the aisle 
I became breathless with hate. The word “lobster” was 
buzzing in my brain amid vague, helpless visions of revenge. 

Presently my eye fell upon Ansel Chaikin, the designer, 
and a strange^hought flashed upon me. 

He was a Russian, like myself. He was an ignorant 
tailor, as illiterate as Meyer Nodelman, but a bom artist in 
his line. It was largely to his skill that the firm, which was 
doing exceedingly well, owed the beginning of its success. 
It was the common talk among the “hands” of the fac- 
tory that his Americanized copies of French models had 
found special favor with the buyer of a certain large de- 
partment store and that this alone gave the house a con- 
siderable volume of business. Jeff Manheimer, who su- 
perintended the work, was a commonplace man, with 
more method and system than taste or initiative. Chaikin 
was the heart and the actual master of the establishment. 
Yet all this really wonderful designer received was forty- 
five dollars a week. He knew his value, and he saw that 
the two brothers were rapidly getting rich, but he was a 
quiet man, unaggressive and unassuming, and very likely 
he had not the courage to ask for a raise. 

i88 


DESTRUCTION OF MY TEMPLE 

As I now looked at him, with my heart full of rancor for 
Manheimer, I exclaimed to myself, “What a fool!” 

He appeared to me in a new light, as the willing victim 
of downright robbery. ^ It seemed obvious that the Man- 
heimers could not do without him, that he was in a position 
to dictate terms to them, even to make them accept him 
as a third partner. And once the matter had presented it- 
self to me in that light it somehow began to vex me. It 
got on my nerves, as though it were an affair of my own. I 
complimented myself upon my keen sense of justice, but in 
reality this was my name for my disgust with Chaikin’s 
passivity and for the annoyance and the burning ill-will 
which the rapid ascent of the firm aroused in me. I be- 
grudged them — or, rather, Jeff — the money they were mak- 
ing through his efficiency. 

“The idiot!” I soliloquized. “He ought to start on his 
own hook with some smart business man for a partner. 
Let Jeff try to do without that Tobster’ of a Russian.” 

The idea took a peculiar hold upon my imagination^ I 
could not look at Ansel Chaikin, or think of him, without 
picturing him leaving the Manheimers in a lurch and be- 
coming a fatal competitor of theirs. I beheld their downfall. 
I gloated over it. 

But Chaikin lacked gumption and enterprise. What he 
needed was an able partner, some man of brains and force. 
And so, unbeknown to Chaikin, the notion was shaping 
itself in my mind of becoming his manufacturing partner. 

The thought of Meyer Nodelman’s humble beginnings 
and of the three hundred-odd dollars I had in my savings- 
bank whispered encouragement into my ear. I had heard 
of people who went into manufacturing with even less than 
that sum. Moreover, it was reasonable to expect that 
Chaikin had laid up some money of his own. Oiu* pre- 
carious life among unfriendly nations has made a thrifty 
people of us, and for a man like Chaikin forty-five dollars 
a week, every week in the year, meant superabundance. 

The Manheimers were relegated to the background. It 
was no longer a mere matter of punishing Jeff. It was a 
much ^eater thing. 

I visioned myself a rich man, of course, but that was 
merely a detail. What really hypnotized me was the ven- 
ture of the thing. It was a great, daring game of life. 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 

I tried to reconcile this new dream of mine with my 
college projects. I was again performing the trick of 
eating the cake and having it. I would picture myself 
building up a great cloak business and somehow contriving, 
at the same time, to go to college. 

The new scheme was scarcely ever absent from my mind. 
I would ponder it over my work and during my meals. 
It would visit me in my sleep in a thousand grotesque 
forms. Chaikin became the center of the universe. I was 
continually eying him, listening for his voice, scrutinizing 
his look, his gestures, his clothes. 

He was an insignificant-looking man of thirty-two, with 
almost a cadaverous face and a very prominent Adam’s 
apple. He was not a prepossessing man by any means, 
but his bluish eyes had a charming look, of boy-like dreami- 
ness, and his smile was even more child-like than his look. 
He was dressed with scrupulous neatness and rather pre- 
tentiously, as behooved his occupation, but all this wx^d 
scarcely have prevented one from telling him for a tailor 
from some poor town in Russia. 

Now and then my project struck me as absurd. For 
Chaikin was in the foremost ranks of a trade in which I 
was one of the ruck. Should he conceive the notion of 
going into business on his own account, he woiild have no 
difficulty in forming a partnership with considerable capital. 
Why, then, should he take heed of a piteous schemer of 
my caliber ? But a few minutes later I would see the matter 
in another light. 


CHAPTER II 


NE Sunday morning in the latter part of May I 



w betook myself to a certain block of new tenement- 
houses in the neighborhood of East noth Street and 
Central Park, then the new quarter of the more prosperous 
Russian Jews. Chaikin had recently moved into one of 
these houses, and it was to call on him that I had made my 
way from down-town. I found him in the dining-room, 
playing on an accordion, while his wife, who had answered 
my knock at the door, was busy in the kitchen. 

He scarcely knew me. To pave the way to the object of 
my visit I began by inquiring about designing lessons. As 
teaching was not in his line, we soon passM to other topics 
related to the cloak trade. I found him a poor talker and a 
very uninteresting companion. He answered mostly in 
monosyllables, or with mute gestures, often accompanied 
by his child-like grin or by a perplex^ stare of his bluish 
eyes. 

Gradually I gave the conversation a more personal turn. 
When, somewhat flushed, I finally hinted at my plan, he 
shrank with an air of confusion. 

At this jtmcture his wife made her appearance, followed 
by her eight-year-old boy. Chaikin looked relieved. 

“I hear you are talking business,” she said, summarily 
taking possession of the situation. *‘What is it all 


about?’ 


Completely taken aback by her domineering manner, I 
sought escape in embarrassed banter. 

“You have scared me so,” I said, “I canT speak. Fll 
tell you everything. That’s just what brings me here. 
Only let me first catch my breath and take a look at your 
stalwart little man of a boy.” 

Her grave face relaxed into an involuntary smile. 

What struck me most in her was the startling resemblance 


191 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 

■she bore to her husband. The two looked like brother and 
sister rather than like husband and wife. 

“You must be relatives,’' I observed, for something 
pleasant to say, and put my foot in it. 

‘ ‘ Not at all, ’ ’ she replied, with a frown. 

To win back her good graces I proceeded to examine 
Maxie, her boy, in spelling. The stratagem had the de- 
sired effect. 

We got down to business again. When she heard my 
plan she paused to survey me. I felt a sinking at the heart. 
I interpreted her searching look as saying, “The nerve this 
snoozer has!’’ But I was mistaken. Her pinched, sallow 
face grew tense with excitement, and she said, with coy 
eagerness : 

“How can we tell if your plan amounts to anything? 
If you gave us an idea of how much you could put up — ’’ 

“It would not require a million,’’ I hazarded. 

“A million! Who talks of millions! Still, it would take 
a good deal of capital to start a factory that shotdd be 
something like.’’ 

“There’ll be no trouble about money,” I parried, fighting 
shy of the more imposing term “ capital,” which made my 
paltry three hundred still paltrier. 

“There is money and money,” she answered, with furtive 
glances at me. “A nickel is also money.” 

“I am not speaking of nickels, of course.” 

“I should say not. It’s a matter of many thousands of 
dollars.” 

I was diunfounded, but instantly rallied. “ Of coiu*se,” I 
assented. “At the same time it depends on many things.” 

“Still, you ought to give us some idea how much you 
could put in. Is it — is it, say, fifteen thousand?” 

That she should not deem it unnatural for a young 
man of my station to be able to raise a sum of this size was 
partly due to her utter lack of experience and partly to an 
impression prevalent among people of her class that “noth- 
ing is impossible, in the land of Columbus.” 

I pretended to grow thoughtful, with an effect of making 
computations. I even produced a piece of paper and a 
pencil and indulged in some sham figuring. At last I said: 

“Well, I can’t as yet tell you exactly how much. As I 
have said, it depends on certain things, but it ’ll be' all 

192 


DESTRUCTION OF MY TEMPLE 

right. Besides, money is really not the most important 
part in a scheme of this kind. A man of brains and a 
hustler will make a lot of money, while a fool will lose a lot. 
There are others who want to go into business with me. 
Only I know Mr. Chaikin is an honest man, and that’s what 
I value more than anything else. I hate to take up with 
people of whom I can’t be sure, don’t you know — ” 

“You forget the main thing,’’ she could not forbear to 
break in. “ Mr. Chaikin is the best designer in New Y ork. ’ ’ 

“Everybody knows that,’’ I conceded, deeming it best 
to flatter her vanity. ‘ ‘ That’s just what makes it ridiculous 
that he should work for others, make other people rich in- 
stead of trying to do something for himself. I have some 
plans by which the two of us — Mr. Chaikin taking charge 
of the manufacturing and I of the business outside — would 
do wonders. We would simply do wonders. There is an- 
other fine designer who is anxious to form a partnership 
with me, but I said to myself, ‘ I must first see if I could not 
get Mr. Chaikin interested.”’ 

Mrs. Chaikin tried to guess who that other designer was, 
but I pleaded, mysteriously, certain circumstances that 
placed the seal of discretion on my lips. 

“I won’t tell anybody,” she assured me, in a flutter of 
curiosity. 

“ I know you won’t, but I can’t. Honest.” 

“But, I tell you, I won’t say a word to anybody. Strike 
me dumb if I do!” 

“ I can’t,. Mrs. Chaikin,” I besought her. 

“Don’t bother,” her husband put in, good-naturedly. 
“A woman will be a woman.” 

I went on to describe the “wonders” that the firm of 
Chaikin & Levinsky would do. Mrs. Chaikin’s eyes glit- 
tered. I held her spellbound. Her husband, who had 
hitherto been a passive listener, as if the matter under dis- 
cussion was one in which he was not concerned, began to 
show signs of interest. It was the longest and most elo- 
quent speech I had ever had occasion to deliver. It seemed 
to carry conviction. 

Children often act as a barometer of their mother’s 
moods. So when I had finished and little Maxie slipped up 
close to me and tactily invited me to fondle him I knew that 
I had made a favorable impression on his mother. 

193 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 


I was detained for dinner. I played with Maxie, gave 
him problems in arithmetic, went into ecstasies over his 
cuteness.” I had a feeling that the way to Mrs. Chaikin’s 
heart was through Maxie, but I took good care not to over- 
play my part. 

We are all actors, more or less. The question is only 
what our aim is, and whether we are capable of a “convinc- 
ing personation.” At the time I conceived my financial 
scheme I knew enough of human motive to be aware of this. 


CHAPTER III 


I T was a sultry, sweltering July afternoon in May, one 
of those escapades of the New York climate when the 
population finds itself in the grip of midsummer discom- 
forts without having had time to get seasoned to them. I 
went into the Park. I had come away from the Chaikins* 
under the impression that if I could raise two or three 
thousand dollars I might be able, by means of perseverance 
and diplomacy, to achieve my purpose. But I might as 
well have set myself to raise two or three millions. 

I thought of Meyer Nodelman, of Mr. Even and his 
wealthy son-in-law, of. Maximum Max. But the idea of 
approaching them with my venture could not be taken 
seriously. The images of Gitelson and of Gussie crossed 
my mind almost simultaneously. I rejected them both. 
Gitelson and I might, perhaps, start manufacturing on a 
small scale, leaving Chaikin out. But Chaikin was the 
very soul of my project. Without him there was no life 
to it. Besides, where was he, Gitelson? Was it worth 
while htmting for him? 

As for Gussie, the notion of marrying her for her money 
seemed a joke, even if she were better-looking and younger. 
That her dower was anywhere near three thousand dollars 
was exceedingly doubtful. However, the image of her 
washed-out face would not leave my mind. Her hoarding 
might amount to over one thousand, and in my despair the 
sum was tempting. “She is a good girl, the best of all I 
know,” I defended myself before the “Good Spirit” in me. 
“Also she is a most sensible girl. Just the kind of wife a 
business man needs.” In addition I urged the tinie- 
honored theory that a homely wife is less likely to flirt 
with other men and to neglect her duties than a good- 
looking one. 

I took the car down-town and made my way to Gussie’s 

195 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 


lodgings that very afternoon. I did so before I had made up 
my mind that I was prepared to marry her. “I’ll call on 
her, anyhow,” I decided. “Then we shall see. There can 
be no harm in speaking to her.” 

I was impelled by the adventure of it more than by any- 
thing else. 

In spite of the unbearable heat, I almost felt sure that 
I should find her at home. Going out of a Sunday required 
presentable clothes, which she did not possess. She was 
saving for her dower with her usual intensity. 

I was not mistaken. I found her on the stoop in a crowd 
of women and children. 

“I must speak to you, Gussie,” I said, as she descended 
to the sidewalk to meet me. “Let’s go somewhere. I 
have something very important I want to say to you.” 

“ Is it again something about your studying to be a smart 
man at my expense?” she asked, rather good-naturedly. 

“No, no. Not at all. It’s something altogether dif- 
ferent, Gussie.” 

The nervous emphasis with which I said it piqued her 
interest. Without going up-stairs for her hat she took me 
to the Grand Street dock, not many blocks away. The 
best spots were already engaged, but we found one that 
suited our purpose better than the water edge would have 
done. It was a secluded nook where I could give the rein 
to my eloquence. 

I told her of my talk with the Chaikins, omitting names, 
but inventing details and bits of “local color” calculated to 
appeal to my listener’s imagination and business sense. 
She followed my story with an air of stiff aloofness, but this 
only added fuel to the fervor with which I depicted the 
opportunity before me. 

“ So you have thrown that college of yours out of your 
mind, haven’t you?” she said in a dry, non-committal way. 

I felt the color mounting to my face. “Well, not en- 
tirely,” I answered. 

“Not entirely?” 

“I mean — Well, anyhow, what do they do at college? 
They read books. Can’t I read them at home? One can 
find time for everything.” Returning to my new project, I 
said: “It’s a great chance, Gussie. It wordd be an awful 
thing if I had to let it slip out of my hand.” 

196 


DESTRUCTION OF MY TEMPLE 

That what I wanted was her dower (with herself as an 
unavoidable appendage) went without sa3dng. It was im- 
plied, as a matter of course. 

“How much would your great designer want you to 
invest?” she asked, with an air of one guided by mere 
curiosity, and with a touch of irony to boot. 

“A couple of thousand dollars might do, I suppose.” 

“A couple of thousand!” she said, lukewarmly. “Tell 
your ^eat designer he is riding too high a horse.” 

“Still, in order to start a decent business — ' I said, 
throwing a covert glance at her. 

“Cloak-factories have been started with a good deal 
less,” she snapped back. 

“On Division Street, perhaps.” 

“And what do you fellows expect to do — start on 
Broadway?” 

“Well, it takes some money to get started even on 
Division Street.” 

“Not two thousand. It has been done for a good deal 
less.” 

“I know; but still — I am sure a fellow must have 
some money.” 

“ It depends on what you call ‘some,’ ” 

It was the same kind of fencing contest as that which 
I had had with Mrs. Chaikin. I was sounding Gussie’s 
purse as the designer’s wife had mine. Finally she took me 
in hand for a severe cross-examination. She was obviously 
interested. I contradicted myself in some minor points, 
but, upon the whole, I stood the test well. 

“ If it is all as you say,” she finally declared, “ there seems 
to be something in it.” 

“Gussie!” I said, tremulously, “there is a great chance 
for us — ” 

“Wait,” she interrupted me, suddenly bethinking herself 
of a new point. “ If he is as great a designer as you say he 
is, and he works for a big firm, how is it, then, that he can’t 
find a partner with big money?” 

“He could, any number of them, but he has confidence 
in me. He says he would much rather start with me on two 
thousand than with somebody else on twenty. He thinks 
I should make an excellent business man, and that between 
the two of us we should make a great success of it. Money 

197 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 

is nothing — so he says — ^money can be made, but with a 
fool of an outside man even more than twenty thousand 
dollars might go up in smoke.” 

“That’s so,” Gussie assented, musingly. 

There was a pause. 

“Well, Gussie?” I mustered courage to demand. 

“You don’t want me to give you an answer right off, 
do you? Things like that are not decided in a huny.” 

We went on to discuss the project and some indifferent 
topics. It was rapidly growing dark and cool. Looming 
through the thickening dusk, somewhat diagonally across 
the dock from us, was the figure of a yotmg fellow with his 
head reclining on the shoulder of a young woman. A little 
fiuther off and nearer to the water I could discern a white 
shirt-waist in the embrace of a dark coat. A song made 
itself heard. It was “After the Ball is Over,” one of 
the sentimental songs of that day. “ Tara-ra-boom-de- 
aye” followed, a tune usually full of joyous snap and go, 
but now performed in a subdued, brooding tempo, tinged 
with sadness. It rang in a girlish soprano, the rest of the 
crowd listening silently. By this time the gloom was so 
dense that the majority of us could not see the singer, 
which enhanced the mystery of her melody and the charm of 
her young voice. Presently other voices joined in, all in 
the same meditative, somewhat doleful rhythm. Gayer 
strains would have sounded sacrilegiously out of tune with 
the darkling glint of the river, with the mysterious splash 
of its waves against the bobbing bulkheads of the pier, 
with the starry enchantment of the passing ferry-boats, 
with the love-enraptured solemnity of the spring night. 

I had not the heart even to think of business, much 
less to talk it. We fell silent, both of us, listening to the 
singing. Poor Gussie! She was not a pretty girl, and she 
did not interest me in the least. Yet at this moment I 
was drawn to her. The brooding, plaintive tones which 
resounded aroimd us had a bewitching effect on me. It 
filled me with yearning; it filled me with love. Gussie was 
a woman to me now. My hand sought hers. It was an 
honest proffer of endearment, for my soul was pra)dng for 
communion with hers. 

She withdrew her hand. “This should not be done in a 
hurry, either,” she explained, pensively. 

198 


DESTRUCTION OF MY TEMPLE 

“Gussie! Dear Gussie!” I said, sincerely, though not 
unaware of the temporary nature of my feeling. 

“ Don’t!” she implored me. 

There was something in her plea which seemed to say: 
“You know you don’t care for me. It’s my money that has 
brought you here. Alas! It is not my lot to be loved for 
my own sake.” 

Her unspoken words broke my heart. 

“Gussie! I swear to you you’re dear to me. Can’t 
you believe me?” 

The singing night was too much for her. She 5 delded to 
my arms. Urged on by the chill air, we clung together in a 
delirium of love-making. There were passionate embraces 
and kisses. I felt that her thin, dried-up lips were not to 
my taste, but I went on kissing them with unfeigned fervor. 

The singing echoed dolefully. We remained in that se- 
cluded nook until the growing chill woke us from our 
trance. I took her home. When we reached a tiny 
square jammed with express- wagons we paused to kiss once 
more, and when we found ourselves in front of her stoop, 
which was now deserted, the vigorous hand-clasp with 
which I took my leave was symbolic of another kiss. I 
went away without discovering the size of her hoard. I 
was to call on her the next evening. 

As I trudged along through the swarming streets on my 
way home the predominant feeling in my heart was one of 
physical distaste. Poor thing! I felt that marrying her 
was out of the question. 

Nevertheless, the next evening I went to see her as 
arranged. I fotmd her out. Her landlady handed me a 
letter. It was in Yiddish: 

Mr. Levinsky [it read], I do not write this myself, for I cannot 
write, and I do not want you to think that I want to make believe 
that I can. A man is writing it for me for ten cents. I am 
telling him the words and he is writing just as I tell him. It was 
all a mistake. You know what I mean. I don’t care to mar^ 
you. You are too smart for me and too young, too. 1 am afraid 
of you. I am a simple girl and you are educated. I must look 
for my equal. If I married you, both of us would be sorry for it. 
Excuse me, and I wish you well. Please don’t come to see me 
any more. 


199 


Gussie. 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 

The message left me with a feeling of shame, sadness, and 
commiseration. During that evening and the forenoon of 
the following day I was badly out of spirits. 

There was nothing to do at the shop, yet I went there 
just to see Chaikin, so as to keep up his interest in my 
scheme.. He was glad to see me. He had a message from 
his wife, who wanted me to call in the evening. Gussie’s 
letter was blotted out of my memory. I was once more 
absorbed in my project. 

I spent the evening at the designer’s house. Mrs. 
Chaikin made new attempts at worming out the size of my 
fortune and, in addition, something concerning its origin. 

“Is it an inheritance?’’ she queried. 

“An inheritance? Why, would you like me to get one?” 
I said, playfully, as though talking to a child. 

She could not help laughing. “Well, then, is it from a 
rich brother or a sister, or is it your own money?” she 
pursued, falling in with the facetious tone that I was 
affecting. 

“Any kind of money you wish, Mrs. Chaikin. But, 
seriously, there will be no trouble about cash. The main 
point is that I want to go into manufacturing and that I 
should prefer to have Mr. Chaikin for my partner. There 
is plenty of money in cloaks, and I am bent upon making 
heaps, ^eat heaps, of it — ^for Mr. Chaikin and myself. 
Really, isn’t it maddening to think that he should be making 
other people rich, while all he gets is a miserable few dollars 
a week? It’s simply outrageous.” 

So speaking, I worked Mrs. Chaikin up to a high sense of 
the absurdity of the thing. I was rapidly gaining ground 
with her. 

And so, pending that mysterious something to which 
I was often alluding as the source of my prospective fortune, 
I became a frequent visitor at her house. Sometimes she 
would invite me to supper; once or twice we spent Sunday 
together. As for little Maxie, he invariably hailed me with 
joy. I was actually fond of him, and I was glad of it. 


CHAPTER IV 


T he time I speak of, the late ’8o’s and the early ’90’s, 
is connected with an important and interesting chap- 
ter in the history of the American cloak business. Hitherto 
in the control of German Jews, it was now beginning to 
pass into the hands of their Russian co-religionists, the 
change being effected under peculiar conditions that were 
destined to lead to a stupendous development of the in- 
dustty. If the average American woman is to-day dressed 
infinitely better than she was a quarter of a century ago, 
and if she is now easily the best-dressed average woman in 
the world, the fact is due, in a large measure, to the change 
I refer to. 

The transition was inevitable. While the manufacturers 
were German Jews, their contractors, tailors, and machine 
operators were Yiddish-speaking immigrants from Russia 
or Austrian Galicia. Although the former were of a 
superior commercial civilization, it was, after all, a case of 
Greek meeting Greek, and the circumstances were such that 
just because they represented a superior commercial civiliza- 
tion they were doomed to be beaten. 

The German manufactiirers were the pioneers of the 
industry in America. It was a new industry, in fact, 
scarcely twenty years old. Formerly, and as late as the 
’70’s, women’s cloaks and jackets were little known in the 
United States. Shawls were worn by the masses. What 
few cloaks were seen on women of means and fashion were 
imported from Germany. But the demand grew. So, 
gradually, some German-American merchants and an 
American shawl firm bethought themselves of manufactur- 
ing these garments at home. The industry processed, the 
new-born great Russian immigration — a child of the 
massacres of 1881 and 1882 — bringing the needed army of 
tailors for it. There was big money in the cloak business, 
14 201 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 


and it wotild have been unnatural if some of these tailors 
had not, sooner or later, begun to think of going into busi- 
ness on their own hook. At first it was a hard struggle. 
The American business world was slow to appreciate the 
commercial possibilities which these new-comers repre- 
sented, but it learned them in course of time. 

It was at the beginning of this transition period that my 
scheme was bom in my mind. Schemes of that kind were 
in the air. 

Meyer Nodelman, the son of my landlady, had not the 
remotest inkling of my plans, yet I had consulted him about 
them more than once. Of course, it was all done in a 
pmely abstract way. Like the majority of our people, 
he was a talkative man, so I would try to keep him talking 
shop. By a system of seemingly casual questioning I 
would pump him on sundry details of the clothing business, 
on the differences and similarities between it and the cloak 
trade, and, more especially, on how one started on a very 
small capital. 

He bragged and blustered, but oftentimes he would be 
carried away by the sentimental side of his past stmggles. 
Then he would unburden himself of a great deal of un- 
varnished history. On such occasions I would obtain from 
him a veritable treastire of information and suggestions. 

Some of the generalizations of this homespun and quaint 
thinker, too, were interesting. Talking of credit, for ex- 
ample, he once said : 

“When a fellow is a beginner it’s a good thing if he has a 
credit face.” 

I thought it was some sort of commercial term he was 
using, and when I asked him what it meant he said : 

“Why, some people are just bom with the kind of face 
that makes the woolen merchant or the bank president 
tmst them. They are not more honest than some other 
fellows. Indeed, some of them are plain pickpockets, but 
they have a credit face, so you have got to tmst them. 
You just can’t help it.’’ 

“And if they don’t pay?” 

“But they do. They get credit from somebody else and 
pay the jobber or the banker. Then they get more credit 
from these people and pay the other fellows. People of 
this kind can do a big business without a cent of capital. 

202 


DESTRUCTION OF MY TEMPLE 


In Russia a fellow who pays his bills is called an honest 
man, but America is miles ahead of Russia. Here you can 
be the best pay in the world and yet be a crook. You 
wouldn’t say that every man who breathes God’s air is 
honest, would you? Well, paying your bills in America 
is like breathing. If you don’t, you are dead.” 

Chaikin, too, often let fall, in his hesitating, monosyllabic 
way, some observation which I considered of value. Of 
the purely commercial side of the industry he knew next 
to nothing, but then he could tell me a thing or two con- 
cerning the psychology of popular taste, the forces operat- 
ing behind the scenes of fashion, the methods employed by 
small firms in stealing styles from larger ones, and other 
tricks of the trade. 

At last I resolved to act. It was the height of the season 
for winter orders, and I decided to take time by the fore- 
lock. 

One day when I called at the designer’s, and Mrs. Chaikin 
asked me for news (alluding to the thousands I was sup- 
posed to be expecting), I said: 

“Well, I have rented a shop.” 

“Rented a shop?” 

“That’s what I did. It’s no use missing the season. 
If a fellow wants to do something, there is nothing for it 
but to go to work and do it, else he is doomed to be a slave 
all his life.” 

When I added that the shop was on Division Street her 
face fell. 

“ But what difference does it make where it is?” I argued, 
with studied vehemence. “It’s only a place to make sam- 
ples in — ^for a start.” 

“Mr. Chaikin is not going into a wee bit of a business 
like that. No, sir.” 

In the course of our many discussions it had often hap- 
pened that after overruling me with great finality she 
would end by yielding to my point of view. I hoped this 
would be the case in the present instance. 

“Don’t be so hasty, Mrs. Chaikin,” I said, with a smile. 
“Wait till you know a little more about the arrangement.” 

And dropping into the Talmudic singsong, which usually 
comes back to me when my words assume an argumentative 
character, I proceeded* 


203 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 


“ In the first place, I don’t want Mr. Chaikin to leave the 
Manheimers — not yet. All I want him to do is to attend 
to our shop evenings. Don’t be uneasy: the' Manheimers 
won’t get wind of it. Leave that to me. Well, all I want 
is some samples to go around the stores with. The rest 
will come easy. We’ll make things hum. See if we don’t. 
When we have orders and get really started we’ll move out 
of Division Street. Of course we will. But would it not 
be fooHsh to open up on a large scale and have Mr. Chaikin 
give up his job before we have accomplished anything? 
I think it would. Indeed, it’s my money that’s going to be 
invested. Do you blame me for being careful, at the be- 
ginning at least? I neither want Mr. Chaikin to risk his 
job nor m5rself to risk big money.” 

“But yx>u haven’t even told me how much you can put 
in,” she blurted out, excitedly. 

‘‘As much as will be necessary. But what’s the use 
dumping a big lot at once? Many a big business has 
failed, while firms who start in a modest way have worked 
themselves up. Why should Mr. Chaikin begin by risking 
his position? Why? Why?” 

The long and short of it was that Mrs. Chaikin became 
enthusiastic for my Division Street shop, and the next 
day her husband took two hours off to accompany me to a 
nondescript woolen-store on Hester Street, where we bought 
fifty dollars’ wprth of material. 

The rent for the shop was thirty dollars a month. One 
month’s rent for two sewing-machines was two dollars. 
A large second-hand table for designing and cutting and 
some old chairs cost me twelve dollars more, leaving me a 
balance of over two hundred dollars. 

Before I went to rent the premises for our prospective 
shop I had withdrawn my money from the savings-bank 
and deposited it in a small bank where I opened a check 
account. 

“Once I am to play the part of a manufacturer it would 
not do to pay bills in cash,” I reflected. “I must pay in 
checks, and do so like one to the manner bom.” 

At this the magic word “ credit ” loomed in letters of gold 
before me. I was aware of the fascination of check-books, 
so, being armed with one, I expected to be able to buy 
things, in some cases, at least, without having to pay for 

204 


DESTRUCTION OF MY TEMPLE 


them at once. Besides, my bank might be induced to grant 
me a loan. Then, too, one might issue a check before one 
had the amount and thereby gain a day’s time. There 
seemed to be a world of possibilities in the long, narrow book 
in my breast pocket. I was ever conscious of its presence. 
I have a vivid recollection of the elation with which I drew 
and issued my first check (in payment of thirty dollars, the 
first month’s rent for our prospective cloak-factory). 
Humanity seemed to have become divided into two dis- 
tinct classes — ^those who paid their obligations in cash and 
those who paid them in checks. I still have that first 
check-book of mine. 


CHAPTER V 


HAIKIN made up half a dozen sample garments. I 
took them to the department store to which the 



Manheimer Brothers catered, but the buyer of the cloak 
department would not so much as let me untie my bundle. 
He was a middle-aged man (women buyers were rare in 
those days), an Irish- American of commanding figure. 
After sweeping me with a glance of cold curiosity, he waved 
me aside. My Russian name and my appearance were 
evidently against me. I tried the other department stores 
— ^with the same result. The larger business world of the 
city had not yet learned to take the Russian Jew seriously 
as a factor in advanced commerce. The buyer of the 
cloak department in the last store I visited was an American 
Jew, a fair-complexioned little fellow, all aglitter with neat- 
ness. At first he took an amused interest in me. When 
I had unpacked my goods and was about to show him one 
of Chaikin’s jackets he checked me. 

“Suppose we gave you an order for five hundred,” he 
said, with a smile; “five himdred jackets to be delivered at 
a certain date.” 

“ I would deliver it,” I answered, boldly. “ Why not ?” 

“I don’t know why. Maybe you would, maybe you 
wouldn’t. How can we be sure you would?” 

Before I had time to answer he asked me how long I 
had been in the country. When I told him, he compli- 
mented me on my English. I was sure it meant business. 
I was thrilled. 

“Have you got a shop?” he further questioned. “How 
many hands do you employ?” 

“ &venty-five.” 

He sized me up. “Where is your place?” 

“On Division Street.” 

“Well, well! What is your rating?” 


206 


DESTRUCTION OF MY TEMPLE 

I did not know what he meant. So, for an answer, I 
made a new attempt to submit the contents of my bundle 
for his inspection. At this he made a gesture of disgust 
and withdrew. A cold sweat broke out on my forehead. 

I had heard of the existence of small department stores 
in various sections of the city, so I went in search of 
them. 

I found myself in the vicinity of the City College. As I 
passed that comer I studiously looked away. I felt like a 
convert Jew passing a S3niagogue. 

It was a warm day. My pack seemed to grow heavier 
with every block I walked, and so did my heart. I was 
pempiring freely; my collar wilted. All of which did any- 
thing but make me look as “a man who paid his bills in 
checks.” At last, walking up Third Avenue I came across 
a place where there was quite a large display of jackets in 
the windows. Upon my opening the door and announcing 
my mission, two jaunty young fellows invited me in with 
elaborate courtesy, almost with anxiety. My heart leaped 
for joy. I fell to opening my bundle. The two yotmg 
men inspected every jacket, went into ecstasies over each 
of them, and then asked me all sorts of irrelevant questions 
until it dawned upon me that I was being made game of. 
It appeared that the father of the two young men, the 
proprietor of the store, manufactured his own goods, for 
wholesale as well as for retail trade. 

I received much better treatment in a store on Avenue B, 
but my goods proved too high for that neighborhood. As 
if to atone for this, the proprietor of this store, a kindly 
Galician Jew, gave me a list of the minor department 
stores I was looking for, and some valuable suggestions 
in addition. 

My dinner that day consisted of two ring-shaped rolls 
which I bought in a Jewish grocery-store and which I ate 
on a bench in Tompkins Square. 

The day passed most discouragingly. It was about 
7 o’clock when, disheartened to the point of despair, I 
dragged my wearied limbs in the direction of my “ factory.” 
When I got there I found my partner waiting for me — ^not 
alone, but in the company of his wife. 

“Well?” she shrieked, jumping to meet me. 

“Splendid!” I replied, with enthusiasm. “It looks even 
207 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 

better than I expected. I could have got good orders 
at once, but a fellow must not be too hasty. You have 
got to look around first — find out who is who, you 
know.*’ 

Mrs. Chaikin looked crestfallen. ‘ ‘ So you did not get any 
orders at all?” 

“What’s your hurry?” her husband said, pleadingly. 
“Levinsky is right. You can’t sell goods unless you know 
who you deal with.” 

The following two days were as barren of results as the 
first. Mrs. Chaikin had lost all confidence in the venture. 
She was becoming rather hard to handle. 

“I don’t want Ansel to bother any more,” she said, 
peevishly. “You know what the Americans say, ‘Time is 
money.’ Pay Ansel for his work and let us be ‘friends at 
a distance.’ ” 

“Very well,” I said, and, producing my check-book, I 
asked, “How much is it?” 

The sight of my check-book acted like a charm. The 
situation suddenly assumed brighter colors in Mrs. Chai- 
kin’s eyes. 

“Look at him! He thought I really meant it,” she 
grinned, sheepishly. 

Every night I would go to bed sick at heart and with 
my mind hif made up to drop it all, only to wake in the 
morning more resolute and hopeful than ever. Hopeful 
and defiant. It was as though somebody — ^the whole 
world — ^were jeering at my brazen-faced, piteous efforts, 
and I was bound to make good, “just for spite.” 

I learned of the existence of “purchasing offices” where 
the buyers of several department stores, from so many 
cities, made their headquarters in New York. Also, I 
discovered that in order to keep track of the arrivals of 
these buyers I must follow a daily paper called Hotel 
Reporter (the ordinary newspapers did not furnish informa- 
tion of this character in those days). A man who manu- 
factured neckties in the same ramshackle building in which 
I hoped to manufacture cloaks volunteered to let me look 
at his Reporter every day. This man was naturally in- 
clined to be neighborly, but I had found that an occasional 
quotation or two from the Talmud was particularly helpful 
in obtaining a small favor from him. 

208 


DESTRUCTION OF MY TEMPLE 

I knocked about among the purchasing offices with bull- 
dog tenacity, but during the first few days my efforts in 
this direction were as futile as in the case of the New York 
stores. Meanwhile, time was pressing. So far as out-of- 
town buyers were concerned, the ‘ ‘ winter season ’ ’ was draw- 
ing to a close. All I could see were some belated stragglers. 
One of these was a man from the Middle West, a stout, 
fleshy American with quick, nervous movements which 
contradicted his well-fed, languid-looking face. 

He shot a few glances at my samples, just to get rid of me, 
but he liked the designs, and I could see that he found my 
prices tempting. 

“How soon will you be able to deliver five hundred?” 
he snarled. 

“In three weeks.” 

“Very well — go ahead!” And speaking in his jerky, 
impatient way, he went on to specify how many cloaks he 
wanted of each kind. 

I left him with my heart divided between unutterable 
triumph and black despair. Five hundred cloaks! How 
would I raise the money for so much raw material? It 
almost looked like another practical joke. 

By this time I was more than sure that the Chaikins had 
a considerable little pile, but to turn to them for funds was 
impossible. It would have let my cat out of the bag. I 
sought credit at Claffin’s and at half a dozen smaller places, 
but all in vain. I could not help thinking of Nodelman’s 
“credit face.” Ah, if that kind of a face had fallen to my 
lot ! But it had not, it seemed. It looked as if there were 
no hope for me. 

Finally I took the necktie man into my confidence, the 
result being that he unburdened himself of his own financial 
straits to me. 

One afternoon I was moping around some of the side- 
streets off lower Broadway in quest of some new place 
where I might try to beg for credit, when I noticed the 
small sign-board of a commission merchant. Upon entering 
the place I found a fine-looking elderly American dictating 
something to a stenographer. When the man had heard 
my plea he looked me over from head to foot. 

I felt like a prisoner facing the jury which is about to 
announce its verdict. 


209 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 

At last he said : “Well, you look pretty reliable. I guess 
ril trust you the goods for thirty days.” 

It was all I could do to restrain myself from invoking 
benedictions on his head and kissing his hands as my 
mother would have done under similar circumstances. 

“So I do have a ‘credit face’!” I exclaimed to myself, 
gleefully. 

When I found myself in the street again I looked at my 
reflection in store windows, scanning my “credit face.” 

The Chaikins took it for granted that I had paid for the 
goods on the spot. 

Things brightened up at our ‘ ‘ factory. ’ ’ I ordered an ad- 
ditional sewing-machine of the instalment agent and hired 
two operators — poor fellows who were willing to work 
fourteen or fifteen hours a day for twelve dollars a week. 
(The union had again been revived, but it was weak, and 
my employees did not belong to it.) As for myself, I 
toiled at my machine literally day and night, snatching two 
or three hours’ sleep at dawn, with some bundles of cut 
goods or half-finished cloaks for a bed. Chaikin spent 
every night, from 7 to 2, with me, cutting the goods and 
doing the better part of the other work. Mrs. Chaikin, 
too, lent a hand. Leaving Maxie in the care of her mother, 
she would spend several hours a day in the factory, finishing 
the cloaks. 

The five htmdred cloaks were shipped on time. I was 
bimsting with consciousness of the fact that I was a manu- 
facturer — that a big firm out West (a firm of Gentiles, mind 
you !) was recognizing my claim to the title. I was Ameri- 
can enough to be alive to the special glamour of the words, 
“out West.” 

Goods in our line of business usually sold “for cash,” 
which meant ten days. Ten days more, then, and I should 
receive a big check from that fiim. That would enable me 
to start new operations. Accordingly, I went out to look 
for more orders. 

Whether my first success had put new confidence in me, 
or whether my past experiences had somewhat rounded off 
my rough edges and enabled me to speak to business people 
in a more effective manner than I could have done before, 
the proprietor of a small department store on upper Third 
Avenue let me show him my samples. My prices made an 

210 


DESTRUCTION OF MY TEMPLE 


impression on him. My cloaks were five dollars apiece 
lower than he was in the habit of paying. He looked 
askance at me, as though my figures seemed too good to be 
true, rnitil I found it the best policy to tell him the im- 
embellished truth. 

“The big manufacturers of whom you buy have big 
office expenses,” I explained. “They make a lot of fuss, 
and you’ve got to pay for it. My principle is not to make 
fuss at the retailer’s expense. Our office costs us very, very 
little. We are plain people. But that isn’t all. Your big 
manufacturer pays for union labor, so he takes it out of you. 
Now, we don’t bother about these things. We get the best 
work done for the lowest wages. The big men in the 
business wouldn’t even know where hands of this kind 
could be got. We do.” 

I took my departure with an order for three hundred 
cloaks, expecting to begin work on them as soon as I 
received that check ‘ ‘ from out West . ” Things seemed to be 
coming my way. 

As I sat in an Elevated train going down-town I figured 
the profits on the two orders and pictured other orders 
coming in. I beheld our little factory crowded with 
machines, I heard their bewitching whir-r, whir-r. Chaikin 
would have to leave the Manheimers, of course. 

In the afternoon of the sixth day, when I called at one 
of the purchasing offices I have mentioned, I received 
the information that the firm whose check I was awaiting 
so impatiently had failed! 


CHAPTER VI 


HE failure of the Western firm seemed to nave nipped 



1 my commercial career in the bud. The large order 
I had received from its representative was apparently to 
be the death as well as the birth of my glory. In my 
despair, I tried to make a virtue of necessity. I was tell- 
ing myself that it served me right; that I had had no 
business to abandon my intellectual pursuits. I was in- 
clined to behold something like the hand of Providence 
in the bankruptcy of that firm. At the same time I was 
casting about in my mind for some way of raising new 
money with which to pay the kindly commission merchant, 
get a new bill of goods from him, and fill my new order. 

When I explained the matter to Mrs. Chaikin she was on 
the brink of a fainting spell. 

‘‘You’re a liar and a thief!” she shrieked. “There never 
was a Western firm in the world. It’s all a lie. You sold 
the goods for cash.” 

Her husband knew something about firms and credit, 
so I had no difficulty in substantiating my assertion to him. 

“It’s only a matter of days when I shall get the big 
check that is coming to me,” I assured them. I went on 
to spin a long yam, to which she listened with jeers and 
outbursts of uncomplimentary Yiddish. 

One day I mustered courage and called on Mrs. Chaikin. 
I did so on an afternoon when her husband was sure to be at 
work, because I had a lurking feeling that, being alone with 
me, she would be easier to deal with. 

When she saw me she gasped. “What, you?” she said. 
“You have the nerve to come up here?” 

“Come, come, Mrs. Chaikin,” I said, earnestly. “Please 
be seated and let us talk it all over in a business-like 
manner. With your sense, and especially with your sense for 
business, you will understand me.” 


212 


DESTRUCTION OF MY TEMPLE 

“Please don’t flatter me,” she demurred, sternly. 

But I knew that nothing appealed to her vanity so 
much as being thought a clever business woman, and I 
protested : 

“ Flatter you! In the first place, it is a well-known fact 
that women have more sense than men. In the second 
place, it is the talk of every cloak-shop that Mr. Chaikin 
owes his high position to you as much as to his own ability. 
Everybody, everybody says so.” 

I talked of “unforeseen difficulties,” of a “well-known 
landlord” whose big check I was expecting every day; 
I composed a story about that landlord’s father-in-law; 
agreed with Mrs. Chaikin that it had been a mistake on 
my part to trust the buyer of that Western firm the goods 
without first consulting her; and the upshot was that she 
made me stay to supper and that pending the arrival of 
Chaikin I took Maxie to the Park. 

The father-in-law of my story was Mr. Even, of course. 
I had portrayed him vividly as coming to my rescue in 
my present predicament, so vividly, indeed, that my own 
fib haunted me the next day. The result was that in 
the evening I made myself as presentable as I could, and 
repaired to the synagogue where he spent much of his 
time reading Talmud. 

I had not visited the place since that memorable day, 
my first day in America. I recognized it at once. I was 
thrilled. The four-odd years seemed twenty-four. 

Mr. Even was not there, but he soon came in. He had 
aged considerably. He was beginning to look somewhat 
deci*epit. His dignity was tinged with the sadness of old 
age. 

“ Good evening, Mr. Even. Do you know me?” I began. 

He scanned me closely, but failed to recognize me. 

“I am David Levinsky, the ‘green one’ you befriended 
four and a half years ago. Don’t you remember me, 
Mr. Even? It was in this ve^ place where I had the good 
fortune to make your acquaintance. I’m the son of the 
woman who was killed by Gentiles, in Antomir,” I added, 
mournfully. 

“Oh yes, indeed!” he said, with a wistful smile, somewhat 
abashed. He took snuff, looked me over once more, and, as 
if his memory had been brightened by the snuff, he burst 
213 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 

out: “Lord of the World! You are that young man! 
Why, I confess I scarcely recognize you. Of course I re- 
member it all. Why, of course I remember you. Well, 
well! How have you been getting along in America?^’ 

“Can’t complain. Not at all. You remember that 
evening? After you provided me with a complete outfit, 
like a father fixing up his son for his wedding-day, and 
you gave me five dollars into the bargain, you told me not 
to call on you again until I was well established in life. 
Do you remember that?” 

“Of course I do,” he answered, with a beaming glance at 
two old Talmudists who sat at their books close by. 

“Well, here I am. I am running a cloak-factory.” 

He began to question me about my affairs with sad 
curiosity. I said that business was “good, too good, in 
fact,” so that it required somewhat more capital than I 
possessed. 

I soon realized, however, that he did not care for me 
now. My Americanized self did not make the favorable 
impression that I had made four and a half years before, 
when he gave me my first American hair-cut. 

I inquired after his daughter and his son-in-law, but 
my hint that the latter might perhaps be willing to indorse 
a note for me evoked an impatient grunt. 

“My son-in-law! Why, you don’t even know him!” he 
retorted, with a suspicious look at me. 

I turned it off with a joke and asked about the hen- 
pecked man. Mr. Even had not seen him for four years. 
The other Talmudists present had never even known him. 
A man with extremely long black side-locks who spoke with 
a Galician accent became interested. After Mr. Even 
went to his wonted seat at the east wall, where he took up 
a book, this man said to me, with a sigh : 

“Oh, it is not the old home. Over there people go to 
the same synagogue all their lives, while here one is con- 
stantly on the move. They call it a city. Pshaw! It 
is a market-place, a bazar, an inn, not a city! People 
are together for a day and then, behold! they have flown 
apart. Where to? Nobody knows. I don’t know what 
has become of you and you don’t know what has become 
of me.” 

“That’s why there is no real friendship here,” I chimed 
214 


DESTRUCTION OF MY TEMPLE 

in, heartily. “That’s why one feels so friendless, so 
lonely.” 

My shop, of course, shut down, and I roamed about the 
streets a good deal. I was restless. I continually felt 
nonplussed, ashamed to look myself in the face, as it were. 
One forenoon I found myself walking in the direction of 
Twenty-third Street and Lexington Avenue. The college 
building was now a source of consolation. Indeed, what 
was money beside the halo of higher education? I paused 
in front of the building. There were several students on 
the campus, all Jewish boys. I accosted one of them. I 
spoke to him enviously, and left the place thrilling with a 
determination to drop all thought of business, to take the 
entrance examination, and be a college student at last. 
I was almost grateful to that Western firm for going into 
bankruptcy. 

And yet, even while I was tingling with this feeling, a 
voice exclaimed in my heart, “Ah, if that Western firm had 
not failed!” 

The debt I owed the American commission merchant 
agonized me without let-up. I couldn’t help thinking of 
my “credit face.” To disappoint him, of all men, seemed 
to be the most brutal thing I had ever done. I imagined 
myself obtaining just enough money to pay him; but, as I 
did so, I could not resist the temptation of extending the 
sum so as to go on manufacturing cloaks. I was in- 
cessantly cudgeling my brains for some “angel” who would 
come to my financial rescue. 

The spell of my college aspirations was broken once 
for all. My Temple was destroyed. ^ Nothing was left of 
it but vague yearnings and something like^ a feeling of 
compimction which will assert itself, sometimes, to this 
day. 

The Talmud tells us how the destruction of Jerusalem 
and the great Temple was caused by a hen and a rooster. 
The destruction of my American Temple was caused by a 
bottle of milk. 

The physical edifice still stands, though the college has 
long since moved to a much larger and more imposing 
building or group of buildings. I find the humble old 
21 $ 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 


structure on Lexington Avenue and Twenty-third Street 
the more dignified and the more fascinating of the two. 
To me it is a sacred spot. It is the sepulcher of my dearest 
ambitions, a monument to my noblest enthusiasm in 
America. 


BOOK IX 

DORA 


zi :40oa 
AaOd 


CHAPTER I 


** I TOW about it?” Mrs. Chaikin said to me, ominously. 

jn “About what? What do you mean, Mrs. Chai- 
kin?” 

“Oh, you know what I mean. It is no use pla3dng the 
fool and trying to make ^ fool of me.” 

The conversation was held in oiu* deserted shop on an 
afternoon. The three sewing-machines, the cutting-table, 
and the pressing-table looked desolate. She spoke in an 
undertone, almost in a whisper, lest the secret of her hus- 
band’s relations with me should leak out and reach his 
employers. She had been guarding that secret all along, 
but now, that our tmdertaJang had apparently collapsed, 
she was particularly uneasy about it. 

“I don’t believe that store in the West has failed at 
all. In fact, I know it has not. Somebody told me all 
about it.” 

This was her method of cross-examining me. I read her 
a clipping containing the news of the bankruptcy, but as 
she could not read it herself, she only sneered. I reasoned 
with her, I pleaded, I swore; but she kept sneering or 
nodding her head mournfully. 

“I don’t believe you. I don’t believe you,” she finally 
said, shutting her eyes with a gesture of despair and ex- 
haustion. “Do I believe a dog when it barks? Neither 
do I believe you. I curse the day when I first met you. 
It was the black year that brought you to us.” She fell 
to wringing her hands and moaning: “Woe is me! Woe 
is me!” 

Finally she tiptoed out of the room and down the stairs. 

In my despair I longed for somebody to whom I could 
unbosom myself. I thought of Meyer Nodelman. A self- 
made man and one who had begun manufacturing almost 
penniless like myself, he seemed to be just the man I 
219 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 


needed. A thought glimmered through my mind, “And 
who knows but he may come to my rescue?” 

I was going to call at his warehouse, but upon second 
thought I realized that the seat of his cold self-interest 
would scarcely be a favorable setting for the interview and 
that I must try to entrap him in the humanizing atmosphere 
of his mother’s home for the purpose. 

The next time I saw him at his mother’s I took him up 
to my little attic and laid my tribulations before him. I 
told him the whole story, ahnost without embellishments, 
omitting nothing but Chaikin’s name. 

“Is it all true?” he interrupted me at one point. 

I swore that it was, and went on. At the end I offered 
to prove it all to his satisfaction. 

“You don’t need to prove it to me'' he replied. “What 
do I care?” Then, suddenly, casting off his reserve, he 
blurted out: “Look here, young fellow! If you think I 
am going to lend you money you are only wasting time, 
for I am not.” 

“And why not?” I asked, boldly, with studied dignity. 

“Why not! You better tell me why yes,” he chuckled. 
“You have a lot of spunk. That you certainly have, and 
yx>u ought to make a good business man, but I won’t loan 
you money, for all that.” 

“Weren’t you once hard up yourself, Mr. Nodelman? 
You have made a success of it, and now it would only be 
right that you should help another fellow get up in the 
world. You won’t lose a cent by it, either. I take an oath 
on it.” 

“You. can’t have an oath cashed in a bank, can you?” 

“Why did that commission merchant take a chance? 
If a Gentile is willing to help a Jew, and one whom he had 
never seen before, you should not hesitate, either.” 

“Well, there is no use talking about it,” was his final 
decision. 

The following day I received a letter from him, inviting 
me to his office. 

His warehouse occupied a vast loft on a little street off 
Broadway. Arrived there, I had to pass several men, all 
in their shirt-sleeves, who were attacking mountains of 
cloth with long, narrow knives. One of these directed me 
to a remote window, in front of which I presently found 

220 


DORA 

Nodelman lecturing a man who wore a tape-measure around 
his neck. 

Nodelman kept me waiting, without offering me a seat, a 
good half-hour. He was in his shirt-sleeves, like the others, 
yet he looked far more dignified than I had ever seen him 
look before. It was as though the environment of his little 
kingdom had made another man of him. 

Finally, he left the man with the tape-measure and 
silently led me into his little private office, a narrow strip 
of partitioned-off space at the other end of the loft. 

When we were seated and the partition door was shut 
he said, with grave mien, “Well,” and fell silent again. 

I gazed at hun patiently. 

“Well,” he repeated, “I have thought it over.” And 
again he paused. At last he burst out : “ I do want to help 
you, young fellow. You didn’t expect it, did you? I do 
want to help you. And do you know why ? Because other- 
wise you won’t pay that Gentile and I don’t want a good- 
hearted Gentile to think that Jews are a bad lot. That’s 
number one. Number two is this: If you think Meyer 
Nodelman is a hog, you don’t know Meyer Nodelman, 
Number three : I rather liked the way you talked yesterday. 
I said to myself, said I : ‘ An educated fellow who can talk 
like that will be all right. He ought to be given a lift, 
for most educated people are damn fools.’ Well, I’ll tell 
you what I am willing to do for you. I’ll get you the goods 
for that order of yours, not for thirty days, but for sixty. 
What do you think of that? Now is Nodehnan a hog or is 
he not? But that’s as far as I am willing to go. I can 
only get you the goods for that Third Avenue order. 
See? But that won’t be enough to help you out of your 
scr^, not enough for you to pay that good Gentile on 
time.” 

He engaged in some mental arithmetic by means of 
which he reached the conclusion that I should need an addi- 
tional four hundred dollars, and he wound up by an ulti- 
matum : he would not furnish me the goods imtil I had pro-^ 
duced that amount. 

“Look here, young fellow,” he added; “since you were 
^art enough to get that Gentile and Meyer Nodelman to 
help you out, it ought not to be a hard job for you to get 
a third fellow to take an interest in you. Do you remember 
221 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 

what I told you about those credit faces ? I think you have 
got one.” 

‘T have an honest heart, too,” I said, with a smile. 

‘‘Your heart I can’t get into, so I don’t know. See? 
Maybe there is a rogue hiding there and maybe there isn’t. 
But your face and your talk certainly are all right. They 
ought to be able to get you some more cash. And if they 
don’t, then they don’t deserve that I should help you out, 
either. See?” He chuckled in appreciation of his own 
syllogism. 

‘‘ It’s a nice piece of Talmud reasoning,” I complimented 
him, with an enthusiastic laugh. ‘‘But, seriously, Mr. 
Nodelman, I shall pay you every cent. You run ab- 
solutely no risk.” 

I pleaded with him to grant me the accommodation un- 
conditionally. I tried to convince him that I should con- 
trive to do without the additional cash. But he was 
obdurate, and at last I took my leave. 

‘‘Wait a moment! What’s your hurry? Are you afraid 
you’ll be a couple of minutes longer becoming a millionaire? 
There is something I want to ask you.” 

‘‘What is it, Mr. Nodelman?” 

“How about your studying to be a doctor-philosopher?” 
he asked, archly. 

“ Oh, well, one can attend to business and find time for 
books, too,” I answered. 

I came away in a new transport of expectations and in a 
new agony of despair at once. On the whole, however, my 
spirits were greatly buoyed up. Encouraged by the result 
of taking Nc^ehnan into my confidence, I decided to try a 
similar heart-to-heart talk on Max Margolis, better known 
to the reader as Maximum Max. He had some money. 

I had seen very little of him in the past two years, hav- 
ing stumbled upon him in the street but two or three times. 
But upon each of these occasions he had stopped me and 
inquired about my affairs with genuine interest. He was 
fond of me. I had no doubt about it. And he was so 
good-natured. Our last chance meeting antedated my new 
venture by at least six months, and he was not likely to have 
any knowledge of it. I felt that he would be sincerely glad 
to hear of it and I hoped that he would be inclined to help 
me launch it. Anyhow, he seemed to be my last resort, and 

222 


DORA 

I was determined to make my appeal to tiim as ejffective 
as I knew how. 

As he had always seen me shabbily clad, I decided to over- 
whelm him with a new suit of clothes. I needed one, at 
any rate. 

After some seeking and inquiring, I found bim in a 
Bowery furniture-store, one of the several places from which 
he supplied his instalment customers. It was about lo 
o'clock in the morning. 

“There is something I want to consult you about, Max,” 
I said. “Something awfully important to me. You’re 
the only man I know who could advise me and in whom I 
can confide,” I added, with an implication of great intimacy 
and affection. “It’s a business scheme. Max. I have a 
chance to make lots of money.” 

The conversation was held in a dusky passage of the 
lab37mthine store, a narrow lane running between two 
barricades of furniture. 

“What is that? A business scheme?” he asked, in a 
preoccupied tone of voice and straining his eyes to look 
me over. “You are dressed up, I see. Quite prosperous, 
aren’t you?” 

As we emerged into the glare of the Bowery he scru- 
tinized my suit once again. I quailed. I now felt that 
to have come in such a screamingly new suit was a fatal 
mistake. I cursed myself for an idiot of a smart Aleck. 
But he spoke to me with his usual cordiality and my spirits 
rose again. However, he seemed to be busy, and so I 
asked him to set an hour when he could see me at leisure. 
We made an appointment for 3 o’clock in the afternoon. 
I was to meet h im at the same furniture-store; but upon 
second thought, and with another glance at my new 
(Rothes, he said, jovially: 

“Why, you are rigged out like a regular monarch! It is 
quite an honor to invite you to the house. Come up, will 
you? And, as I won’t have to go out to meet you, you 
can make it 2 o’clock, or half past.” 


CHAPTER II 


M ax occupied the top floor of an old private house on 
Henry Street, a small “railroad” apartment of two 
large, bright rooms — a living-room and a kitchen — ^with 
two small, dark bedrooms between them. The ceihng was 
low and the air somewhat tainted with the odor of mc4d 
and dampness. I found Max in the general living-room, 
which was also a dining-room, a fat boy of three on his lap 
and a slender, pale girl of eight on a chair close by. His 
wife, a slender young woman with a fine white complexion 
and serious black eyes, was clearing away the limch things. 

“Mrs. Margolis, Mr. Levinsl^,” he introduced us. 
“ Plainly speaking, this is my wifey and this is a friend of 
mine.” 

As she was leaving the room for the kitchen he called 
after her, “Dvorah! Dora! make some tea, will you?” 

She craned her neck and gave him a look of resentment. 
“It’s a good thing you are telling me that,” she said. 
“Otherwise I shouldn’t know what I have got to do, 
should I?” 

When she had disappeared he explained to me that he 
variously addressed her by the Yiddish or English form of 
her name. 

“We are plain Yiddish folk,” he generalized, good- 
humoredly. 

A few minutes later, as Mrs. Margolis placed a glass of 
Russian tea before me, he drew her to him and pinched her 
white cheek. 

“What do you think of my wifey, Levinsky?” 

She smiled — a grave, deprecating smile — ^and took to 
pottering about the house. 

“And what do you think of these little customers?” he 
went on. “Lucy, examine mamma in spelling. Quick! 
Dora, be a good girl, sit down and let Levinsl^ see how 
224 


DORA 

educated you are.” (“Educated” he said in English, with 
the accent on the “a.”) 

“What do you want?” his wife protested, softly. “Mr. 
Levinsky wants to see you on business, and here you are 
bothering him with all sorts of nonsense.” 

“Never mind his business. It won’t run away. Sit 
down, I say. It won’t take long.” 

She yielded. Casting bashful side-glances at nobody in 
particular, she seated herself opposite Lucy. 

“Well?” she said, with a little laugh. 

I thought her eyes looked too serious, almost angry. 
“Insane people have eyes of this kind,” I said to myself. 
I also made a mental note of her clear, fresh, delicate com- 
plexion. Otherwise she did not interest me in the least, 
and I mutely prayed Heaven to take her out of the room. 

“How do you spell ‘great’?” the little girl demanded. 

“G-r-e-a-t — great,” her mother answered, with a smile. 

“Book?” 

“B-o-o-k — ^book. Oh, give me some harder words.” 

“Laughter.” 

“ L-a-u-g-h-t-e-r — laughter.” 

“Is that correct?” Margolis turned to me, all beaming. 
“ I wish I could do as much. And nobody has taught her, 
either. She has learned it all by herself. Little Lucy is the 
only teacher she ever had. But she will soon be ahead of 
her. Won’t she, Lucy ? ’ ’ 

“I’m afraid I am ahead of her already,” Mrs. Margolis 
said, gaily, yet flushed with excitement. 

“You are not!” Lucy protested, with a good-natured 
pout. 

“Shut up, bad girl you,” her mother retorted, again with 
a bashful side-glance. 

“Is that the way you talk to your mamma?” Max 
intervened. “ I’ll tell your teacher.” 

I was on pins and needles to be alone with him and to get 
down to the object of my visit. 

Finally he said, brusquely: “Well, we have had enough of 
that. Leave us alone, Dora. Go to the parlor and take the 
kids along.” 

She obeyed. 

When he heard of my venture he was interested. He 
often interrupted me with boisterous expressions of admira- 
22 $ 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 

tion for my subterfuges as well as for the plan as a whole. 
With all his boisterousness, however, there was an air of 
caution about him, as if he scented danger. When I 
finally said that all depended upon my raising four hundred 
dollars his face clouded. 

“I see, I see,” he murmured, with sudden estrangement. 
“I see. I see.” 

‘ ‘ Don’t lose courage, ’ ’ I said to myself. ‘ ‘ N odelman was 
exactly Hke that at first. Go right ahead.” 

I portrayed my business prospects in the most alluring 
colors and gave Max to understand that if “somebody” 
advanced me the four himdred dollars he would be sure 
to get it back in thirty days plus any interest he might 
name. 

“ It would be terrible if I had to let it all go to pieces on 
account of such a thing,” I concluded. 

There was a moment of very awkward silence. It was 
broken by Max. 

“It’s really too bad. What are you going to do about 
it?” he said. “Where can you get such a ‘somebody’?” 

“I don’t know. That’s why I came to consult you. I 
thought you might suggest some way. It would be a pity 
if I had to give it all up on accoimt of four hundred dollars.” 

“Indeed it would. It would be terrible. Still, four 
htmdred dollars is not four hundred cents. I wish I were 
a rich man. I should lend it to you at once. You know 
I should.” 

“I should pay you every cent of it. Max.” 

“You say it as if I had money. You know I have not.” 

What I did know was that he had, and he knew that I 
did. 

He took to analyzing the situation and offering me ad- 
vice. Why not go to that kindly Gentile, the commission 
merchant, make a clean breast of it, and obtain an extension 
of time? Why not apply to some money-lender? Why 
not make a vigorous appeal to Nodelman? He seemed to 
be an obli^ng fellow, so if I pressed him a little harder 
he might give me the cash as well as the goods. 

I was impelled to retort that advice was cheap, and he 
apparently read my thoughts. 

Presently he said, with genuine ardor: “I tell you what, 
Levinsky. Why not try to get your old landlady to open 

226 


DORA 


her stocking? From what you have told me, she ought 
not to be a hard nut to crack if you only go about it in the 
right way.” 

This suggestion made a certain appeal to me, but I would 
not betray it. I continued resentfully silent. 

“You just try her, Levinsky. She’ll let you have the 
four htmdred dollars, or half of it, at least.” 

“And if she does, her son will refuse to get me the goods, ” 
I remarked, with a sneer. 

“ Nonsense. If you know how to handle her, she will 
realize that she must keep her mouth shut tmtil after she 
gets the money back.” 

“Oh, what’s the use?” I said, impatiently. “I must get 
the cash at once, or all is lost.” 

Again he spoke of money-lenders. He went into details 
about one of them and offered to ascertain his address for 
me. He evidently felt awkward about his part in the 
matter and eager to atone for it in some way. 

“Why should a usurer trust me?” I said, rising to go. 

“Wait. What’s your hurry? If that money-lender 
hears your story, he may trust you. He is a pectdiar feUow, 
don’t you know. When he takes a fancy to a man he is 
willing to take a chance on him. Of course, the interest 
would be rather high.” He paused abruptly, wrinkled 
his forehead with an effect of pondering some new scheme, 
and said: “Wait. I think I have a better plan. I’ll see if 
I can’t get you the money without a money-lender.” With 
this he sprang to his feet and had his wife bring him his 
coat and hat. “I’ll be back in less than half an hour,” he 
said. “Dvorah dear, give Levinsky some more tea, will 
you? I am going out for a few minutes. Don’t let him be 
downhearted.” Then, shaking a finger of warning at me, 
he said, playfully, “Only take care that you don’t fall in 
love with her!” And he was gone. 

“ It’s all play-acting,” I thought. “ He just wants me to 
believe he is trying to do something for me. ’ ’ But, of course, 
I was not altogether devoid of hope that I was mistaken 
and that he was making a sincere effort to raise a loan for 
me. 

Mrs. Margolis went into the kitchen immediately her 
husband departed. Presently she came back, carrj^g a 
glass of tea on a saucer. She placed it before me with an 
227 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 


embarrassed side-glance, brought some cookies, and seated 
herself at the far end of the table. I uttered some com- 
plimentary trivialities about the children. 

When a man finds himself alone with a woman who is 
neither his wife nor a close relative, both feel awkward. 
It is as though they heard a whisper, “There is nobody to 
watch the two of you.” 

Still, confused as I was, I was fully aware of her tempting 
complexion and found her angry black eyes strangely in- 
teresting. Upon the whole, however, I do not think she 
made any appeal to me save by virtue of the fact that she 
was a woman and that we were alone. I was tense with the 
consciousness of that fact, and ever3rthing about her dis- 
turbed me. She wore a navy-blue summer wrapper and I 
noticed the way it set off the soft whiteness of her neck. I 
remarked to myself that she looked yoimger than her 
husband, that she must be about twenty-eight or thirty, 
perhaps. My glances apparently caused her painful em- 
barrassment. Finally she got up again, making a pretense 
of bustling about the room. It seemed to me that when she 
was on her feet she looked younger than when she was 
seated. 

I asked the boy his name, and he answered in lugubrious, 
but distinct, accents: 

“ Daniel Margolis.” 

“He speaks like a grown person,” I said. 

“She used to speak like that, too, when she was of his 
age,” my hostess replied, with a glance in the direction of 
her daughter. 

“ Did you?” I said to Lucy. 

The little girl grinned coyly. 

“Why don’t you answer the gentleman’s question?” her 
mother rebuked her, in English. “It’s Mr. Levinsky, a 
friend of papa’s.” 

Lucy gave me a long stare and lost all interest in me. 

“Don’t you like me at all? Not even a little bit?” I 
pleaded. 

She soon imbent and took to pl3dng me with questions. 
Where did I Hve? Was I a “customer peddler” like her 
papa ? How long had I been in America ? (A question which 
a child of the East Side hears as often as it does queries 
about the weather.) 


228 


DORA 


“Can you spell?” 

“No,” I answered. 

“Not at all?” 

“Not at all!” 

“Shame! But my papa can’t spell, neither.” 

“Shut up, you bad girl you!” her mother broke in with 
a laugh. “Vere you lea’n such nasty things? By your 
mamma? The gentleman will think by your mamma.” 

She delivered her a little lecture in English, taking pains 
to produce the “th” and the American “r,” though her 
“w’s” were “v’s.” 

She urged me not to let the tea get cold. As I took hold 
of the tall, thin, cylindrical glass I noted that it was scrupu- 
lously clean and that its contents had a good clear color. 
I threw a glance around the room and I saw that it was well 
kept and tidy. 

Mrs. Margolis took a seat again. Lucy, with part of a 
cooky in her mouth, stepped over to her and seated herself 
on her lap, throwing her arm around her. She struck 
me as the very image of her mother. Presently, however, 
I discovered that she resembled her father quite as closely. 
It seemed as though the one likeness lay on the surface of 
her face, while the other loomed up from imdemeath, as 
the reflection of a face does from under the surface of water. 
Lucy soon wearied of her mother and walked over to my 
side. I put her on my lap. She would not let me pat her, 
but she did not mind sitting on my knees. 

“Are you a good speller?” I asked. 

“ I c’n spell ^ the words- we get at school,” she answered, 
sagely. 

“How do you spell ‘colonel’?” 

“We never got it at school. But you can’t spell it, 
either.” 

“How do you know I can’t? Maybe I can. Well, let 
us take an easier word. How do you spell ‘because’?” 

She spelled it correctly, her mother joining in playfully. 
I gave them other words, addressing myself to both, and 
they made a race of it, each trying to head off or outshout 
the other. At first Mrs. Margolis did so with feigned 
gaiety, but her face soon set into a grave look and glowed 
with excitement. 

At last I asked them to spell “coefficient.” 

229 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 


*‘We never got it at school,” Lucy demurred. 

“I don’t know what it means,” said Mrs. Margolis, with 
a shrug of her shoulders. 

“It means something in mathematics, in high figuring,” 
J explained in Yiddish. 

Mrs. Margolis shrugged her shoulders once more. 

I asked Lucy to try me in spelling. She did and I ac- 
quitted myself so well that she exclaimed: 

“Oh, you liar you! Why did you say you didn’t know 
how to spell?” 

Once more her mother took her to task for her manners. 

“Is that the vay to talk to a gentleman? Shame! 
Vere you lea’n up to be such a pig ? Not by your mamma !” 

When Max came back Lucy hastened to inform him that 
I could spell “awful good.” To which he replied in 
Yiddish that he knew I was a sm^ fellow, that I could read 
and write “everything,” and that I had studied to go to 
college and “to be a doctor, a lawyer, or anything.” 

His wife looked me over with bashful side-glances. 
“Really?” she said. 

Max told me a lame story about his errand and prom- 
ised to let me know the “final result.” It was clearer than 
ever to me that he was making a fool of me. 


CHAPTER III 


W HEN I hear a new melody and it makes an appeal 
to me its effect usually lasts only as long as I hear 
it, but it is almost sure to reassert itself later on. I scarcely 
ever think of it during the first two, three, or four days, but 
then, all of a sudden, it will pop up in my brain and haunt 
me a few days in succession, humming itself and nagging 
me like a living thing. This was precisely what happened 
to me with regard to Mrs. Margolis. During the first two 
days after I left her house I never gave her a thought, but 
on the third her shy side-glances suddenly loomed up in 
my mind and would not leave it. Just her black, serious 
eyes and those shy looks of theirs gleaming out of a white, 
strikingly interesting complexion. Her face in general was 
a mere blur in my memory. 

I was incessantly racking my brain over my affairs. I 
was so low-spirited and worried that I was imconscious of 
the food I ate or of the streets through which I passed, yet 
her manner of darting embarrassed glances out of the comer 
of her eye and her complexion were never absent from my 
mind. I felt like seeing her once more. However, the 
prospect of calling at her house was now anything but 
alluring. I cotild almost see the annoyed air with which 
her husband would receive me. 

I sought out two usurers and begged each of them to grant 
me the loan, but they unyieldingly insisted on more sub- 
stantial security than the bare story or my venture. I 
made other efforts to raise the money. I approached sev- 
eral people, including the proprietor of the little music- 
store. All to no purpose. 

One afternoon, eight or ten days after my call at the 
Margolises’, when I came to my “factory” I found tmder 
the door a closed envelope bearing the name of that Western 
231 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 


firm. It contained a typewritten letter and a check in 
full payment of my bill. Also a circular explaining that 
the firm had been reorganized with plenty of capital, and 
naming as one of its new directors a man who, from the 
tone of the circular, seemed to be of high standing in the 
financial world. 

My head was in a whirl. The desolate-looking sewing- 
machines of my deserted shop seemed to have suddenly 
brightened up. I looked at the check again and again. 
The figure on it literally staggered me. It seemed to be 
part of a fairy tale. 

I rushed over to Nodelman’s office, but found him gone 
for the day. The next thing on my program was to carry 
the glad news to the Chaikins and to discuss plans for the 
immediate future with my partner. But Chaikin never 
came home before 7. So I first dropped in on the Mar- 
golises to flash my check in Max’s face and, incidentally, 
to see his wife. 

I found him playing with his fat boy. 

“Hello, Max! I have good news!” I shouted, excitedly. 
Which actually meant: “Don’t be uneasy. Max. I am 
not going to ask you for a loan again . ” 

When he had examined the check he said, sheepishly: 

“Now you are all right. Why, something told me il 
along that you would get it.” 

His wife came in, apparently from the kitchen. She 
retiumed my “ Good evening” with free and easy amiability, 
without any shyness or side-glances, and disappeared again. 
I felt annoyed. I was tempted to call after her to come 
back and let me take a good look at her. 

“ Say, Levinsky, you must have thought I would not trust 
you for the four hundred dollars,” Max said. “May I 
have fom* hundred days of distress if I have a cent. What 
few dollars I do have is buried in the business. So help 
me, God! Let a few of my customers stop paying and I 
would have to go begging. It’s the real truth I am telling 
you. Honest.” 

“I know, I know,” I said, awkwardly. “Well, it was as 
if the check had dropped from heaven. Thank God ! Now 
I can begin to do things.” 

I went over the main facts of my venture, this time with 
a touch of bliister. And he listened with far readier atten- 

232 


DORA 


tion and more genuine interest than he had done on the 
previous occasion. We discussed my plans and my pros- 
pects. At one point, when I referred to the Western check, 
he asked to see it again, just for curiosity’s sake, and as I 
watched him look it over I could almost see the change that 
it was producing in his attitude toward me. I do not know 
to what extent he had previously believed my story, if at 
all. One thing was clear : the magic check now made it all 
real to him. As he handed me back the strip of paper he 
gave me a look that seemed to say: “ So you are a manu- 
facturer, you whom I have always known as a miserable 
ragamu^.” 

Mrs. Margolis reappeared. Her husband told her of my 
great check and she returned some trivialities. As we 
thus chatted, I made a mental note of the fascinating 
feminine texture of her flesh. 

He made me stay to supper. It was a cheery repast. 
As though to make amends for his failure to respond when 
I knocked at his door, Max overwhelmed me with at- 
tention. 

We were eating cold sorrel soup, prepared in the old 
Ghetto way, with cream, bits of boiled egg, cucumber, and 
scallions. 

“How do you like it?” he asked. 

“Delicious! And the genuine article, too.” 

“‘The genuine article’!” he mocked me. “What’s the 
use praising it when you eat it like a bird? What’s the 
matter with you ? Are you bashful ? Fire away, old man !” 
Then to his wife: “Why do you keep quiet, Dvorak? 
Whv don’t you tell him to eat like a man and not like a 
bird?” 

“Maybe he doesn’t care for my cooking,” she jested, 
demurely. 

“Why, why,” I replied. “The sorrel soup is fit for a 
king.” 

“You mean for a president,” Max corrected me. “We 
are in America, not in Europe.” 

“How do you know the President of the United States 
would care for a plate of cold sorrel soup?” 

“And how do you know a king would?” 

“If you care for it, I am satisfied,” the hostess said 
to me. 

i6 


233 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 

‘T certainly do. I haven’t eaten anything like it since 
I left home,” I replied. 

” Feed him well, Dvorah. Now is your chance. He will 
soon be a millionaire, don’t you know. Then he won’t 
bother about calling on poor people like us.” 

‘‘But I have said the sorrel soup is fit for a king, and a 
king has many millions,” I rejoined. ‘‘I shall always be 
glad to come, provided Lucy and Dannie have no ob- 
jection.” 

‘‘You remember their names, don’t you?” Mrs. Margolis 
said, beamingly. ‘‘You certainly have a good memory.” 

‘‘Who else should have one?” her husband chimed in. 
“ I have told you he was going to study to be a doctor or a 
lawyer. Lucy, did you hear what imcle said? If you let 
him in he will come to see us even when he is worth a 
million. What do you say? Will you let him in?” 

Lucy grinned childishly. 

Max did most of the talking. He entertained me with 
stories of some curious weddings which he said had re- 
cently been celebrated in his dance-halls, and, as usual, 
it was not easy to draw a line of demarkation between fact 
and fiction. Of one bridegroom, who had agreed to the 
marriage imder threats of violence from the girl’s father, 
he said: 

‘‘You should have seen the fellow! He looked like a 
man going to the electric chair. They were afraid he might 
bolt, so the bride’s father and brother, big, strapping fellows 
both, stuck to him like two detectives. ‘You had better 
not make monkey business,’ they said to him. ‘If you 
don’t want a wedding, you’ll have a funeral.’ That’s 
exactly what they said to him. I was standing close to 
them and I heard it with my own ears. May I not live till 
to-morrow if I did not.” 

Mrs. Margolis looked down shamefacedly. She cer- 
tainly was not unaware of her husband’s failing, and she 
obviously took anything but pride in it. As I glanced at 
her face at this moment it struck me as a singularly truth- 
ful face. ‘‘Those eyes of hers do not express anger, but 
integrity,” I said to myself. And the more I looked at her, 
watched her gestures, and listened to her voice, the stronger 
grew my impression that she was a serious-minded, ingen- 
uous woman, incapable of playing a part. Her manner- 

234 


DORA 


isms were mostly her version of manners, and those that 
were not were frankly affected, as it were. 

The meal over and the dishes washed, Mrs. Margolis 
caused Lucy to bring her school reader and began to read 
it aloud, Lucy or I correcting her pronunciation where it 
was faulty. She was frankly parading her intellectual 
achievements before me, and I could see that she took 
them quite seriously. She was very sensitive about the 
mistakes she made. She accepted our corrections, Lucy’s 
and mine, with great earnestness, often with a gesture of 
annoyance and mortification at the failure of her memory. 

When I bade them good night Max said, heartily, in 
English, ‘‘Call again, Levinsky.” And he added, in a 
mixture of Engli^ and Yiddi^, “Don’t be a stranger, 
even if you are a manufacturer.’’ 

“Call again,’’ his wife echoed, affably. 

“Call again!’’ shouted Dannie, in his funereal voice. 

I left with the comfortable feeling of having spent an 
hour or two in a house where I was sincerely welcome. 

“ It’s a good thing to have real friends,’’ I soliloquized in 
a transport of good spirits, on my way to the Elevated 
station. “Now I sha’n’t feel all alone in the world. 
There is at least one house where I can call and feel at 
home.’’ 

I beheld Mrs. Margolis’s face and her slender figure and 
I was conscious of a remote desire to see her again. 

I was in high feather. While the Elevated train was 
carrying me up-town I visioned an avalanche of new 
orders for my shop and a spacious factory full of machines 
and men. I saw myself building up a great business. 
An ugly thought fl^ed through my mind: Why be 
saddl^ with a partner? Why not get rid of Chaikin? I 
belittled the part which his samples had played in my suc- 
cessful start, and it seemed to be a cruel injustice to myself 
to share, my fortune with a man who had no more brains 
than a cat. But I instantly saw the other side of the 
situation: It was Chaikin’s models that had made the 
Manheimers what they were, and if I clung to him until he 
could afford to let me announce him as my partner the 
very news of it would be a tremendous boost for my factory. 
And then I had a real qualm of compiinction for having 

235 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 


entertained that thought even for a single moment. My 
heart warmed to Chaikin and his family. “I shall be 
faithful to them,” I vowed inwardly. “They have been 
so good to me. We must be absolutely devoted to each 
other. Their house, too, will be like a home to me. Oh, 
it is so sweet to have friends, real friends.” 

It was close upon lo o’clock when I reached the Chai- 
kins’ flat in Harlem. I had barely closed the door be- 
hind me when I whipped out the check, and, dangling it 
before Mrs. Chaikin, I said, radiantly: 

‘ ‘ Good evening. Guess what it is !” 

“The check you expected from your uncle or cousin or 
whatever he is to you. Is it?” she conjectured. 

“No. It’s something far better,” I replied. “It’s a 
check from the Western company, and for the full amount, 
too.” And, although I was fairly on the road to atheism, 
I exclaimed, with a thrill of genuine pity, “Oh, God has 
been good to us, Mrs. Chaikin!” 

I let her see the figures, which she could scarcely make 
out. Then her husband took a look at the check. He did 
know something about figures, so he read the sum out aloud. 

Instead of hailing it with joy, as I had expected her to do, 
she said to me, glumly: 

“And how do we know that you did not receive more?” 

“But that was the bill,” her husband put in. 

“ I am not asking you, am I?” she disciplined him. 

“But it is the amount on the bill,” I said, with a smile. 

“And how do we know that it is?” she demanded. 
“It’s you who write the bills, and it’s you who get the 
checks. What do we know?” 

“Mrs. Chaikin! Mrs. Chaikin!” I remonstrated. “Why 
should you be so suspicious? Can’t you see that I am 
the most devoted friend you people ever had? God has 
blessed us; we are making a success of our business; so 
we must be devoted to one another, while here you imagine 
all kinds of nonsense.” 

“A woman will be a woman,” Chaikin muttered, with his 
sheepish smile. 

The unfeigned ardor of my plea produced an impression 
on Mrs. Chaikin. Still, she insisted upon receiving her 
husband’s share of the profits at once in spot ca^. I 
argued again. 

236 


DORA 


“Why, of course you are going to get your share of the 
profits,” I said, genially. “Of course you are. Only we 
must first pay for the goods of those five hundred coats and 
for some other things. Mustn’t we? Then, too, there is 
that other order to fill. We need more goods and cash 
for wages and rent and other expenses.” 

“But you said you were going to get it all yourself, and 
now you want us to pay for it. You think you are smart, 
don’t you?” 

Her husband opened his mouth, but she waved it shut 
before she had any idea what he wanted to say. 

“Anybody could fool you,*' she said. “‘When a fool 
goes shopping there is rejoicing among the shopkeepers.’” 

With our joint efforts we finally managed to placate her, 
however, and the next evening our shop was the scene of 
feverish activity. 


CHAPTER IV 


{ FILLED my Third Avenue order and went on soliciting 
other business. The season was waning, but I obtained 
a number of small orders and laid foundations for future 
sales. Our capital was growing apace, but we often lacked 
working cash. 

After I paid the debt I owed Meyer Nodelman I obtained 
other favors from him. He took a sponsorial interest in 
my business and often offered me the benefit of his com- 
mercial exp^ence in the form of maxims. 

“Don’t bite off more than you can chew, Levinsky,” 
he would tell me. “ Finding it easy to get people to trust 
you is not enough. Y ou must also find it easy to pay them. ’ ’ 
Some of his other rules were*. 

“Be pleasant with the man you deal with, even if he 
knows you don’t mean it. He hkes it, anyway.’’ 

“Take it from me, Levinsky: honesty is the best policy. 
There is only one line of business in which dishonesty i>ays : 
the burglar business, provided the burglar does not get 
caught. If I thought lying could help my business, I 
should lie day and night. But I have learned that it hurts 
far more than it helps. Be sure that the other fellow be- 
lieves what you say. If you have his confidence you 
have him by the throat.’’ 

It was not always easy to comply with Meyer’s tenets, 
however. The inadequacy of my working capital often 
forced me to have recourse to subterfuges that could not 
♦exactly be called honorable. One day, when we had some 
bills to meet two days before I could expect to obtain the 
<}ash, I made out and signed checks, but inclosed each of 
them in the wrong envelope — this supposed act of inad- 
vertence gaining me the needed two days of grace. On 
another occasion I sent out a number of checks without my 
.signature, which presumably I had forgotten to affix. 

238 


DORA 


There were instances when I was so hard pressed for funds- 
that the fate of our factory hinged on seventy-five or a 
hundred dollars. In one of these crises I bought two gold 
watches on the instalment plan, for the express and sole 
purpose of pawning them for fifty dollars. I bought the 
watches of two men who did not know each other, and 
returned them as soon as I could spare the cash to redeem 
them, forfeiting the several weekly payments which I had 
made on the pretended purchases. There were instances, 
too, when I had to borrow of my employees a few dollars 
with which to buy cotton. Needless to say that all this 
happened in the early stages of my experience as a manu- 
facturer. I have long since been above and beyond such 
methods. Indeed, business honor and business dignity are 
often a luxury in which only those in the front ranks of suc- 
cess can indulge. But then there are features of the game 
in which the small man is apt to be more honorable and 
less cruel than the financial magnate. 

I was continually consulting Max on my affairs. Not 
that I needed his advice or expected to act upon it. These 
confidential talks seemed to promote our intimacy and to 
enhance the security of the welcome I found in his house. 
A great immigrant city like New York or Chicago is full 
of men and women who are alone amid a welter of human 
life. For these nothing has a greater glamour than a 
family in whose house they might be made to feel at home. 
I was one of these desolate souls. I still missed my mother. 
The anniversary of her death was still a feast of longing 
agony and spiritual bliss to me. I scarcely ever visited the 
synagogue of the Sons of Antomir these days, but on that 
great day I was sure to be there. Forgetful of my atheism, 
I would place a huge candle for her soul, attend all the three 
services, without omitting a line, and recite the prayer for 
the dead with sobs in my heart. I had craved some family 
who would show me warm friendship. The Margolises 
were such a family (Meyer Nodehnan never invited me ta 
his house). They were a godsend to me. 

Max was essentially a hospitable man, and really fond of 
me. As for his wife, who received me with the same hearty 
welcome as he, her liking for me was primarily based, as. 
she once put it herself in the presence of her husband, upon, 
my intellectual qualifications. 

239 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 


“It’s good to have educated people come to the house,” 
she remarked. “It’s good for the children and for every- 
body else.” 

“I knew she would like you,” Max said to me. “She 
would give her head for education. Only better look out, 
you two. See that you don’t fall in love with each other. 
Ha, ha!” 

Sometimes there were other visitors in the house — some 
of Max’s friends, his and her fellow-townspeople, her rela- . 
tives, or some neighbor. Dora’s great friend was a stout 
woman with flaxen hair and fishy eyes, named Sadie, or 
Mrs. Shomik, whose little girl, Beckie, was a classmate of 
Lucy’s, the acquaintance and devoted intimacy of the two 
mothers having originated in the intimacy of the two school- 
girls. Sadie lived several blocks from the Margolises, but 
she absolutely never let a day pass without calling on her, 
if it were only for just time enough to kiss her. She was 
infatuated with Dora, and Beckie was infatuated with 
Lucy. 

“They just couldn’t live without one another,” Max 
said, after introducing me to Sadie and explaining the 
situation. 

“Suppose Lucy and Beckie had not happened to be in 
the same school,” I jested, addressing myself to the two 
women. ‘ ‘ What would you have done then ?’ ’ 

“This shows that we have a good God in heaven,” Sadie 
returned, radiantly. “He put the children in the same 
school so that we might meet.” 

“‘A providential match,’” I observed. 

“May it last for many, many years,” Sadie returned, 
devoutly. 

“Say, women!” Max shouted, “you have been more 
than five minutes without kissing. What’s the matter with 
you?” 

At this, Sadie, with mock defiance, walked up to Mrs. 
Margolis, threw her arms around her, and gave her a 
luscious smack on the lips. 

“Bravo! And now you, kids!” Max commanded. 

With a merry chuckle the two little girls flew into each 
other’s arms and kissed. Lucy had dark hair like Dora’s, 
and Beckie flaxen hair like Sadie’s, so when their heads 
were close together they were an amusing reduced copy of 

240 


DORA 

their mothers as these had looked embracing and kissing a 
minute before. 

Max often dropped in to see me at my factory, and 
when I was not busy we would talk of my cloaks, of his 
instalment business, or of women. Women were his great 
topic of conversation, as usual. But then these talks of his 
no longer found a ready listener in me. Now, that I knew 
his wife, they jarred on me. ' A decided change had come 
over me in this respect. I remember it vividly. It was as 
if his lewd discourses desecrated her name and thereby 
offended me. It may be interesting to note, however^ that 
he never took up this kind of topics when we were in his 
house, not even when his wife was out. 

Sometimes I would have supper at his house. More 
often, however — ^usually on Monday, when Max seldom 
went to the dance-halls — I would come after supper and 
spend the rest of the evening there. Sometimes the 
Shomiks would drop in — Sadie, her husband, and Beckie. 
Ben Shomik and Max would play a game of pinochle, 
while I, who never cared for cards, would chat with the 
women or entertain them by entertaining the children. 
Ben — as I came into the habit of calling him — ^was a spare 
little man with an extremely high forehead. He was an 
insurance-collector and only one degree less illiterate than 
Max; but because he had the “forehead of a learned man," 
and because it was his business to go from house to house 
with a long, thick book under his arm, he affected longish 
hair, flowing black neckties, and a certain pomposity of 
manner. One of his ways of being tremendously American 
was to snap his fingers ferociously and to say, “ I don’t care 
a continental!” or, “One, two, three, and there you are!” 
The latter exclamation he would be continually murmuring 
to himself when he was absorbed in pinochle. 


CHAPTER V 


O NE evening, when the Shomiks and I were at Max’s 
house, and Max and Ben were having their game of 
pinochle, the conversation between the women and myself 
turned upon Dora’s efforts to obtain education through her 
little daughter. Encouraged by Sadie and myself, Dora 
let herself loose and told us much of Lucy’s history, or, 
rather, of her own history as Lucy’s mother. In her 
crude, lumbering way and with flushed cheeks she talked 
with profound frankness and quaint introspective insight, 
in the manner of one touching upon things that are en- 
shrined in innermost recesses of one’s soul. 

She depicted the thrills of joyous siuprise with which 
she had watched Lucy, in her infancy, master the beginnings 
of speech. Sometimes her delight would be accompanied 
by something akin to fright. There had been moments 
when it all seemed unreal and weird. 

“ The little thing seemed to be a stranger to me,” she said. 
“Or else, she did not seem to be a human being at all.” 

The next moment she would recognize her, as it were, 
and then she would kiss and yearn over her in a mad 
rush of passion. 

The day when she took Lucy to school — about two years 
before — ^was one of the greatest days in Dora’s life. She 
would then watch her learn to associate written signs with 
spoken words as she had once watched her learn to speak. 
But that was not all. She became jealous of the child. She 
herself had never been taught to read even Hebrew or 
Yiddish, much less a Gentile language, while here, lo and 
behold! her little girl possessed a Gentile book and was 
learning to read it. She was getting education, her child, 
just like the daughter of the landlord of the house in Russia 
in which Dora had grown up. 

“C-a-t — cat,” Lucy would spell out. “R-a-t — ^rat. 
M-a-t — ^mat.” 

242 


DORA 


And poor Dora would watch the performance with mixed 
joy and envy and exclamations like: “What do you think 
of that snip of a thing! Did you ever?” 

Lucy’s school-reader achievements stirred a novel feeling 
of rivalry in Dora’s breast. When the little girl could spell 
half a dozen English words she hated herself for her in- 
feriority to her. 

“The idea of that kitten getting ahead of me! Why, it 
worried the life out of me!” she said. “You may think it 
foolish, but I couldn’t help it. I kept saying to myself, 
‘She’ll grow up and be an educated American lady and 
she’ll be ashamed to walk in the street with me.’ Don’t 
we see things like that? People will beggar themselves to 
send their children to college, only to be treated as fools and 
gpreenhoms by them. I call that terrible. Don’t you? 
Well, I am not going to let my child treat me like that. 
Not I. I should commit suicide first. I want my child to 
respect me, not to look down on me. If she reads a book 
she is to bear in mind that her mother is no ignorant slouch 
of a greenhorn, either.” 

A next-door neighbor, a woman who could read English, 
would help Lucy with her spelling lesson of an evening. 
This seemed to have established special relations between 
the child and that woman from which Dora was excluded. 

She made up her mind to learn to read. If Lucy could 
manage it, she, her mother, could. So she caused the child 
to teach her to spell out words in her First Reader. At 
first she pretended to treat it as a joke, but inwardly she 
took it seriously from the very outset, and later, under the 
intoxicating effect of the progress she was achieving, these 
studies be^me the great passion of her life. Whenever 
Lucy recited some new lines, learned at school, she would 
not rest until she, too, had learned them by heart. Here 
are two “pieces” which she proudly recited to us: 

“The snow is white, 

The sky is blue, 

The sun is bright. 

And so are you.’^ 

“Our ears were made to hear. 

Our tongues were made to talk, 

Our eyes were made to see. 

Our feet were made to walk.'' 

243 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 


Her voice, as she declaimed the lines, attracted Lucy’s 
attention, so she sent her and Beckie into the kitchen. 

“She doesn’t know what a treasure she is to me,” she 
said to us. Then, after she finished the two verses, she 
remarked, wistfully, “Well, my own life is lost, but she 

qVioII Vkp prIlir'Q'f'Pfl 

“Why? Why should you talk like that, Dora?” Sadie 
protested, her fishy eyes full of tragedy. “Why, you are 
only beginning to live.” 

“Of course she is,” I chimed in. 

“Well,” Dora rejoined, “anyhow, I am afraid I love her 
too much. Sometimes it seems to me I am going crazy 
over her. I love Dannie, too, of coiu’se. When he happens 
to hurt a finger or to hit his dear little head against some- 
thing I can’t sleep. Is he not my flesh and blood like 
Lucy? Still, Lucy is different.” She paused and then 
rose from her seat, saying, with a smile: “Wait. I am 
going to show you something.” She went into the kitchen 
and came back, holding a tooth-brush in either hand. 
“ Guess what it is.” 

“Two tooth-brushes,” I answered, with perplexed 
gaiety. 

“Aren’t you smart! I know they are not shoe-brushes, 
but what kind of tooth-brushes? How did I come by 
them? That’s the question. Did I use a tooth-brush in 
my mother’s house?” 

She then told me how Lucy, coming from school one 
day, had announced an order from the teacher that every 
girl in the class must bring a tooth-brush the next 
morning. 

Sadie nodded confirmation. 

“Of course, I went to work and bought, not one brush, 
but two,” Dora ptu*sued. “I am as good as Lucy, am I 
not? If she is worth twelve cents, I am. And if she is 
American lady enough to use a tooth-brush, I am.” 

Lucy is not a usual name on the East Side. It was, in 
fact, the principal of the school who had recommended it, 
at Dora’s solicitation. The little girl had hitherto been 
called Lizzie, the commonplace East Side version of Leah, 
her Hebrew name. Dora never liked it. It did not sound 
American enough, for there were Lizzies or Lizas in Europe, 
too. Any “greenhorn” might bear such a name. So she 

244 


DORA 


called on Lizzie’s principal and asked her to suggest some 
“nicer name” for her daughter. 

“I want a real American one,” she said. 

The principal submitted half a dozen names beginning 
with “L,” and the result was that Lizzie became Lucy. 

Dora went over every spelling lesson with the child. It 
was so sweet to be helpful to her in this way. Lucy, on her 
part, had to reciprocate by hearing her mother spell the 
same words, and often they would have a spelling-match. 
All of which, as I could see, had invested Lucy with the 
fascination of a spiritual companion. 

The child had not been at school many weeks when she * 
began to show signs of estrangement from her mother- 
tongue. Her Yiddish was rapidly becoming clogged with 
queer-sounding “r’s” and with quaintly twisted idioms. 
Yiddish words came less and less readily to her tongue, and 
the tendency to replace them with their English equivalents 
grew in persistence. Dora would taunt her on her “ Gentile 
Yiddish,” yet she took real pride in it. Finally, Lucy 
abandoned her native tongue altogether. She still imder- 
stood her parents, of course, but she now invariably ad- 
dressed them or answered their Yiddish questions in Eng- 
lish. As a result, Dora would make efforts to speak to her 
in the language that had become the child’s natural means 
of expression. It was a sorry attempt at first ; but she was 
not one to give up without a hard struggle. She went at it 
with great tenacity, listening intently to Lucy’s English 
and trying to repeat words and phrases after her. And so, 
with the child’s assistance, conscious or unconscious, she 
kept adding to her practical acquaintance with the language, 
until by the end of Lucy’s first school year she spoke it 
with considerable fluency. 

Dora tried her hand at writing, but little Lucy proved 
a poor penmanship-teacher, and she was forced to confine 
herself to reading. She forged ahead of her, reading pages 
which Lucy’s class had not yet reached. 

To take Lucy to school was one of the keen jo5rs of 
Dora’s existence. Very often they would fall in with 
Lucy’s bosom friend. 

“Good morning, Lucy.” 

“Good morning, Beclae.” 

As she described the smiling, childishly lady-like way 
245 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 


in which the little ^rls exchanged their greetings and then 
intertwined their little arms as they proceeded on their 
way together, Sadie’s fishy eyes filled with tears. 

“Oh, how sweet it is to be a mother!’’ Dora said. 

“I should say it was,” her chum and follower echoed, 
wiping her tears and laughing at once. 

There was a curious element of superstition in Dora’s 
attitude toward her little girl. She had taken it into her 
head that Lucy had been playing the part of a mascot in her 
life. 

“I was a bag of bones until she was bom,” she said. 
“Why, people who are put into the grave look better than 
I did. But my birdie darling came, and, well, if I don’t 
look like a monkey now, I have her to thank. It was 
after her birth that I began to pick up.” 

She had formed the theory that the child was bom to go 
to school for her mother’s sake as well as her own — a 
little angel sent down from heaven to act as a messenger of 
light to her. 

Her story made a stroi^ impression on me. “Max is 
not worthy of her,” I reflected. I wondered whether she 
was fully aware w^t manner of man he was. 


CHAPTER VI 


S ometimes we would go to the Jewish theater to- 
gether, Max, Dora, and I, the children being left at 
Sadie’s house. Once, when Max’s lodge had a benefit per- 
formance and he had had some tickets for sale, we made up 
a party of five: the two couples and myself. On that oc- 
casion I met Jake Mindels at the playhouse. He was now 
studying medicine at the University Medical College, and 
it was a considerable time since I had last seen him. To 
tell the truth, I had avoided meeting him. I hated to 
stand confessed before him as a traitor to my dreams 
of a college education, and I begrudged him his medical 
books. 

I took Max and Dora to see an American play. He did 
not understand much of what he saw and was bored to 
death. As for her, she took in scarcely more than did her 
husband, though she understood many of the words she 
heard, but then she reverently followed the good manners 
of the “real Americans” on the stage, and the sound of 
their “educated” English seemed to inspire her with 
mixed awe and envy. 

Once, on a Monday evening, when I called on the Mar- 
golises, I found Max out. Dora seemed to be ill at ease in 
my company, and I did not stay long. It seemed natural 
to fear that Max, who gave so much attention to the rela- 
tions between the sexes, should view visits of this kind with 
misgivings. His playful warnings that we should beware 
of falling in love with each other seemed to be always in the 
air, and on that evening when he was away and we foimd 
ourselves alone I seemed to hear their echo more distinctly 
than ever. It had a disquieting effect on me, that echo, 
and I decided never to cil unless Max was sure to be at 
home. I enjoyed their hospitality too much to hazard it 

247 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 


rashly. Moreover, Max and Dora lived in peace and I 
was the last man in the world to wish to disturb it. 

To my surprise, however, he did not seem to be jealous 
of me in the least. Quite the contrary. He encouraged 
my familiarities with her, so much so that I soon drifted 
into the habit of addressing her as Dora. 

The better I knew her the greater was the respect with 
which she inspired me. I thought her an unusual woman, 
and I looked up to her. 

It became a most natural thing that I should propose 
myself as a boarder. Thousands of families like the 
Margolises kept boarders to lighten the biu*den of rent-day. 

The project had been trailing in my mind for some time, 
and, I must confess, the fact that Max stayed out till the 
small hours fotrr or five nights a week had something to 
do with it. 

“You would be alone with her,” Satan often whispered. 

Still, there was nothing definitely reprehensible in this 
reflection. It was the prospect of often being decorously 
alone with a woman who inspired me with respect and in- 
terested me more and more keenly that tempted me. 
Vaguely, however, I had a feeling that I was on the road 
to falling in love with her. 

One evening, as I complained of my restaurant meals 
and of certain inconveniences of my lodgings, Max said: 

‘ ‘ Nothing like being married, Levinsky . Take my advice 
and get you a nice little wifey . One like mine, for instance. ’ ’ 

“ Like yours! The trouble is that there is only one such, 
and you have captured her.” 

“Don’t worry,” Dora broke in. “There are plenty of 
others, and better ones, too.” 

“I have a scheme,” I said, seriously. “Why shouldn’t 
you people let me board with you?” 

Natural as the suggestion was, it took them by surprise. 

For a second or two Max gazed at his wife with a per- 
plexed air. Then he said: 

“That would not be a bad idea. Would it, Dora?” 

“I don’t know, I am sure,” she answered, with a shrug 
and an embarrassed smile. “We have never kept boarders. ’ ’ 

“You will try to keep one now, then,” I lurged. 

“If there were room in the house, I should be glad. 
Upon my health and strength I should.”’ 

248 


DORA 


“Oh, you can make room,” I said. 

“Of course you can,” Max put in, warming to the plan 
somewhat. “He could have the children’s bedroom, and 
they could sleep in this room.” 

She held to her veto. 

“Oh, you don’t know what an obstinate thing she is,” 
Max said. “Let her say that white is black, and black it 
must be, even if the world turned upside down.” 

“What do you want of me?” she protested. “Levinsky 
may think I really don’t care to have him. Let us move to 
a larger apartment and I’ll be but too glad to give him a 
room.” 

The upshot was a compromise. For the present I was 
to content myself with having my limcheons and dinners or 
suppers at their house, Dora ch^ging me cost price. 

“ Get him to move to one of those new houses with modem 
improvements,” she said to me, earnestly; “to an apart- 
ment of five light rooms, and I shall give you a room at 
once. The rent would come cheaper than it is now. But 
Max would rather pay more and have the children grow in 
these damp rooms than budge.” 

‘ ‘ Don’t bother me. By ^nd by we shall move out of here. 
All in due time. Don’t bother. Meanwhile see that your 
dinners and suppers are all right. Levinsky thinks you a 
good cook. Don’t disappoint him, then. Don’t mn away 
with the idea it’s on your own account he wants to board 
with us. It is on account of your cooking. That’s all. 
Isn’t it, Levinsky ?” 

“ It’s a good thing to know that I am not a bad cook, at 
least,” she returned. 

“But how about the profits you are going to make on 
him ? I’U deduct them from your weekly allowance, you 
know,” he chaffed her. 

“ Oh no. I am just going to save them and buy a house 
on Fifth Avenue.” 

“You ought to allow me ten per cent, for cash,” I said. 

“She does not want cash,” Max replied. “ Yotir note is 
good enough.” 

I had been taking my meals with them a little over a 
month when they moved into a new apartment, with me as 
their roomer and boarder. The apartment was on the 

17 249 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 


third floor of a comer house on Clinton Street, one of a row 
of what was then a new type of tenement buildings. It 
consisted of five rooms and bath, all perfectly light, and 
it had a tiny private corridor or vestibule, a dumb-waiter, 
an enameled bath-tub, electric and gas light, and an electric 
door-bell. There was a rush for these apartments and Dora 
paid a deposit on the first month’s rent before the builder 
was quite through with his work. My room opened into 
the vestibiile, its window looking out upon a side-street. 
The rent for the whole apartment was thirty-two dollars, 
my board being five and a half dollars a week, which was 
supposed to include a monthly rental of six dollars for my 
room. 

The Shomiks moved into the same house. 


CHAPTER VII 


M y growing interest in Dora burst into flame all at 
once, as it were. It happened at a moment which 
is distinctly fixed in my mind. At least I distinctly re- 
member the moment when I became conscious of it. 

It was on an afternoon, four days after the Margolises 
had taken possession of the new place. The family was 
fully established in it, y/hile I had just moved in. I had 
seen my room, furniture and all, several times before, but 
I had never seen it absolutely ready for my occupancy as I 
did now. It was by far the brightest, airiest, best-fumished, 
and neatest room that I had ever had all to myself. Every- 
thing in it, from the wall-paper to the little wash-stand, 
was invitingly new. I can still smell its grateful odor of 
freshness. When I was left to myself in it for the first time 
and I shut its door the room appealed to me as a compart- 
ment in the nest of a family of which I was a member. My 
lonely soul had a sense of home and domestic comfort that 
aU but overpowered me. The sight of the new quilt and 
of the fresh white pillow, coupled with the knowledge that 
it was Dora whose fingers had prepared it all for me, sent 
a glow of delight through my heart. 

Dora’s name was whispering itself in my mind. I paused 
at the window, an enchanted man. 

A few minutes later, when I re-entered the living-room, 
where she was counting some freshly ironed napkins, her 
face seemed to have acquired a new meaning. I felt that 
a great change had come in my attitude toward her. 

“Well, is everything all right?” she inquired. 

“First rate,” I answered, in a voice that sounded im- 
natural to myself. 

Max was fussing with the rug in the parlor. The chil- 
dren were gamboling from room to room, testing the 
faucets, the dumb-waiter. 

251 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 

“Get avey from there!” Dora shouted. “You’ll hurt 
yourself. Max, tell Lucy not to touch the dumb-vaiter, 
vill you?” 

“Children! Children! What’s a madder vitch you?” 
he called out from the parlor, in English, with a perfunctory 
snarl. Presently he came into the living-room. “Well, 
are you satisfied with your new palace?” he addressed me 
in Yiddish. And for the hundredth time he proceeded to 
make jokes at the various modem “improvements,” at the 
abundance of light, and at my new rank of “real boarder.” 

It is one of the old and deep-rooted customs of the 
Ghetto towns of Europe for a young couple to live with the 
parents of the bride for a year or two after the wedding. 
So Max gaily dubbed me his “boarding son-in-law.” 

“Try to behave, boarding son-in-law,” he bantered me. 
*Tf you don’t yoiu* mother-in-law will starve you.” 

The pleasantry grated on me. 

Dora’s ambition to learn to read and spell English was 
a passion, and the little girl played a more important part 
in the efforts she made in this direction than Dora was will- 
ing to admit. Lucy would tell her the meaning of new 
words as she had heard it at school, but it often happened 
that the official definition she quoted was incomprehensible 
to both. This was apt to irritate Dora or even lead to a 
disagreeable scene. 

If I happened to be around I would explain things to her, 
but she seemed to accept my explanations with a grain of 
salt. She bowed before my intellectual status in a general 
way, but since she had good reason to doubt the quality 
of my English enunciation, she doubted my Yiddish inter- 
pretations as well. Indeed, she doubted everything that 
did not bear the indorsement of Lucy’s school. Whatever 
came from that sacred source was “real Yankee”; every- 
thing else was “greenhorn.” If she failed to grasp some 
of the things that Lucy brought back from school, she would 
blame it on the child. 

“Oh, you didn’t understand what your teacher said,” 
she would scold her. “You must have twisted it all up, 
you stupid.” 

One afternoon, when business was slow and there did 
not seem to be anything to preclude my staying at home 
252 


DORA 


and breathing the air that Dora breathed, I witnessed a 
painful scene« between them. It was soon after Lucy re- 
turned from school. Her mother wanted her to go over her 
last reading-lesson with her, and the child would not do so, 
pleading a desire to call on Beckie. 

“Stay where you are and open your reader,” Dora com- 
manded. 

Lucy obeyed, whimperingly. 

“Read!” 

“I want to go to Beckie.” 

“Read, I say.” And she slapped her hand. 

“Don’t,” I remonstrated. “Let the poor child go enjoy 
herself.” But it only spoiled matters. 

“Read!” she went on, with grim composure, hitting her 
on the shoulder. 

.“I don’t want to! I want to go down-stairs,” Lucy 
sobbed, defiantly. 

“Read!” And once more she hit her. 

My heart went out to the child, but I dared not intercede 
again. 

Dora did not relent until Lucy yielded, sobbingly. 

I left the room in disgust. The scene preyed upon my 
mind all that afternoon. I remained in my room until 
supper-time. Then I found Dora taciturn and downcast 
and I noticed that she treated Lucy with exceptional, though 
undemonstrative, tenderness. 

“Must have given her a licking,” Max explained to me, 
with a wink. 

I kept my counsel. 

She beat her quite often, sometimes violently, each scene 
of this kind being followed by hours of bitter remorse on her 
part. Her devotion to her cliildren was above that of the 
average mother. Lucy had been going to school for over 
two years, yet she missed her every morning as though she 
were away to another city; and when the little girl came 
back, Dora’s face would brighten, as if a flood of new sun- 
shine had burst into the house. 

On one occasion there was a quarrel between mother and 
daughter over the result of a spelling-match between 
them which I had umpired and which Lucy had won. 
Dora took her defeat so hard that she was dejected all that 
evening. 


253 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 


I have said that despite her passionate devotion to Lucy 
she was jealous of her. She was jealous not only of the 
school education she was receiving, but also of her American 
birth. 

She was feverishly ambitious to bring up her children 
in the “real American syle," and the realization of her help- 
lessness in this direction caused her many a pang of despair. 
She was thirstily seeking for information on the subject of 
table manners, and whatever knowledge she possessed of 
it she would practise, and make Lucy practise, with amus- 
ing pomp and circumstance. 

“Don’t reach out for the herring, Lucy!” she would say, 
sternly. “How many times must I tell you about it? 
What do you say?” 

“Pass me the herring, mamma, please.” 

“Not ‘mamma.’” 

“Pass me the herring, mother, please.” 

The herring is passed with what Dora regards as a lady- 
like gestiu*e. 

“Thank you, ma’am,” says Lucy. 

“There is another way,” Dora might add in a case of 
this kind. “ Instead of saying, ‘ Pass me the herring or the 
butter,’ you can say — What is it, Lucy?” 

“May I trouble you for the herring, mother?” 

I asked her to keep track of my table etiquette, too, and 
she did. Whenever I made a break she would correct my 
error solemnly, or with a burst of merriment, or with a 
scandalized air, as if she had caught me in the act of 
committing a felony. This was her revenge for my general 
intellectual superiority, which she could not help admitting 
and envying. 

“You just let her teach you and she will make a man of 
you,” Max would say to me. 

Sometimes, when I mispronounced an English word with 
which she happened to be familiar, or uttered an English 
phrase in my Tahnudic singsong, she would mock me 
gloatingly. On one such occasion I felt the sting of her 
triumph so keenly that I hastened to lower her crest by 
pointing out that she had said “nice” where “nicely” was 
in order. 

“What do you mean?” she asked, perplexedly. 

My reply was an ostentatious discoiurse on adjectives 
254 


DORA 


and adverbs, something which I knew to be utterly beyond 
her depth. It had the intended effect. She listened to my 
explanation stupidly, and when I had finished she said, with 
resignation : 

“ I don’t imderstand what you say. I wish I had time to 
go to evening school, at least, as you did. I haven’t any 
idea of these things. Lucy will be educated' for both of us, 
for herself and for her poor mamma. If my mother had 
understood as much as I do it would have been different.” 
She uttered a sigh, fell silent, and then resiuned: “But I 
can’t complain of my mother, either. She was a diamond of 
a woman, and she was wise as daylight. But Russia is not 
America. No, I can’t complain of my parents. My father 
was a poor man, but ask Max or some of our fellow-towns- 
people and they will tell you what a fine name he had.” 

She was talkative and somewhat boastful like the average 
woman of her class, but there was about her an elusive 
effect of reserve and earnestness that kept me at a distance 
from her. Moreover, the tireless assiduity and precision 
which she brought to her housework and, above all, the 
grim passion of her intellectual struggles created an at- 
mosphere of physical and spiritual tidiness about her that 
inspired me with something like reverence. Living in that 
atmosphere seemed to be making a better man of me. 

Attempting a lark with her, as I had done with Mrs. 
Dienstog and Mrs. Levinsky, my first two landladies in 
New York, was out of the question. 

Needless to explain that this respectful distance did not 
prevent my eyes and ears from feasting upon her luxurious 
complexion, her clear, honest voice, and ^ else that made 
me feel both happy and forlorn in her company. Nor 
would she, aware as she undoubtedly was of the meaning of 
my look or smile, hesitate to respond to them by some 
legitimate bit of coquetry. In short, we often held con- 
verse in that language of smiles, glances, blushes, pauses, 
gestures, which is the gesture language of sex across the 
barrier of decorum. 

These speechless flirtations cost me many an hour which 
I should have otherwise spent at my shop or soliciting trade. 
When away from the magnetic force of her presence I 
would attend to business with unabated intensity. Her 
image visited my brain often, but it did not disturb me. 

255 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 


Rather, it was the image of some customer or creditor or 
of some new style of jacket or cloak that would interfere 
with my peace of mind. My brain was full of prices, bills, 
notes, checks, fabrics, color effects, “lines.” Not infre- 
quently, while walking in the street or sitting in a street- 
car, I would catch myself describing some of those garment 
lines in the air. 

And yet, through all these preoccupations I seemed to be 
constantly aware that something tmusual had happened 
to me, giving a novel tinge to being; that I was a 
changed man. 


CHAPTER VIII 


M ax saw nothing. 

His wife was a very womanly woman with a 
splendid, almost a gorgeous snow-white womanly com- 
plexion, and I was a young man in whom, according to his 
own dictum, women ought to be interested; yet he never 
seemed to feel anything like apprehension about us. This 
man who plumed himself upon his knowledge of women and 
love and who actually had a great deal of insight in these 
matters, this man, I say, was absolutely blind to his wife’s 
power over me. He suspected every man and every woman 
imder the sun, yet he was the least jealous of men so far as 
his wife was concerned, though he loved and was proud of 
her. From time to time he would chaff Dora and myself 
on the danger of our falling in love with each other, but 
that was never more than a joke and, at any rate, I heard 
it from him far less often than that other joke of his — 
about my being his and Dora’s son-in-law. 

“Look out, mother-in-law,’’ he would say to her. “If 
you don’t treat your son-in-law right you’ll lose him.” 

I have said that he was proud of her. One evening, 
while she stood on a chair struggling with a recalcitrant 
window-shade, he drew my attention to her efforts ad- 
miringly. 

“Look at her!” he said under his breath. “Another 
woman would make her husband do it. Not she. I can’t 
kick. She is not a lazy slob, is she?” 

“Certainly not,” I asserted. 

We watched her take the shade down, wind up the spring, 
fit the pins back into their sockets, and then test the flap. 
It was in good working order now. 

“No, she is not a slob,” he repeated, exultantly. “And 
she is not a gossiping sort, either. She just minds her own 
business.” 


257 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 


At this point Dora came over to the table where we sat. 

“Move along!” he said, gaily. “Don’t disturb -us. I 
am telling Levinsky what a bad girl you are. Run along. 

She gave us a shy side-glance like those that had carried 
the first germ of disquiet into my soul, and moved away. 

“No, she is no slob, thank God,” he resumed. He 
boasted of her tidiness and of the way she had picked up 
her English and learned to read and spell, with little Lucy 
for her teacher. He depicted the tenacity and unflagging 
ardor with which she had carried on her mental pursuits 
ever since Lucy began to go to school. “Once she makes 
up her mind to do something she will stick to it, even if the 
world went under. That’s the kind of woman she is. 
And she is no mean, foxy thing, either. When she says 
something you may be sure she means it, if I do say so. 
You ought to know her by this time. Have you ever heard 
her say things that are not so? Or have you heard her 
talk about the neighbors as other women-folk will do ? Have 
you, now? Just tell me,” he pressed me. 

“Of course I have not,” I answered, awkwardly. “There 
are not many women like her.” 

“ I know there are not. And, well, if she is not devoted to 
her hubby, I don’t know who is,” he added, sheepishly. 


CHAPTER IX 


I T was during this period that I received my first baptism 
of dismay as patron of a high-class restaurant. The occa- 
sion was a lunch to which I had invited a buyer from Phil- 
adelphia. The word “ buyer had a bewitching sound for 
me, inspiring me with awe and enthusiasm at once. The 
word “king” certainly did not mean so much to me. The 
august person to whom I was doing homage on the occasion 
in question was a man named Charles M. Eaton, a full- 
blooded Anglo-Saxon of New England origin, with a huge 
round forehead and small, blue, extremely genial eyes. He 
was a large, fair-complexioned man, and the way his kindly 
little eyes looked from under his hemispherical forehead, 
like two swallows viewing the world from under the eaves 
of a roof, gave him a striking appearance. The immense 
restaurant, with its high, frescoed ceiling, the dazzling 
whiteness of its rows and rows of table-cloths, the crowd of 
well-dressed customers, the glint and rattle of knives and 
forks, the subdued tones of the orchestra, and the imposing 
black-and-white figures of the waiters struck terror into my 
Antomir heart. The bill of fare was, of course, Chinese to 
me, though I made a pretense of reading it. The words 
swam before me. My inside pocket contained sufficient 
money to foot the most extravagant bill our lordly waiter 
was likely to present, but I was in constant dread lest my 
treasure disappear in some mysterious way; so, from time 
to time, I felt my breast to ascertain whether it was still 
there. 

The worst part of it all was that I had not the least idea 
what I was to say or do. The occasion seemed to call for 
a sort of table manners which were beyond the resources 
not only of a poor novice like myself, but also of a trained 
specialist like Dora. 

Finally my instinct of self-preservation whispered in my 
259 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 


ear, “Make a clean breast of it.” And so, dropping the 
bill of fare with an air of mock despair, I said, jovially: 

“ I’m afraid you’ll have to tell me what to do, Mr. Eaton. 
It’s no use bluffing. I have never been in such a fine 
restaurant in my life. I am scared to death, Mr. Eaton. 
Take pity.” 

The Philadelphian, who was a slow-spoken, slow-witted, 
though shrewd, man, was perplexed at first. 

“I see,” he said, coloring, and looking confusedly at me. 

The next minute he seemed to realize the situation and to 
enjoy it, too, but even then he was apparently embarrassed. 
I cracked another joke or two at my own expense, until 
finally he burst into a hearty laugh and cheerfully agreed 
to act as master of ceremonies. Not only did he do the 
ordering, explaining things to me when the waiter was not 
aroimd, but he also showed me how to use my napkin, how 
to eat the soup, the fish, the meat, what to do with the 
finger-bowl, and so forth and so on, to the minutest detail. 

“I am afraid one lesson won’t be enough,” I said. “You 
must give me another chance.” 

“With pleasure,” he replied. “Only the next ‘lesson* 
will be on me.” And then he had to teU me what “ on me ’* 
meant. 

He took a fancy to me and that meant orders, not only 
from him, but also from some people of his acquaintance, 
buyers from other towns. 

I sought to dress like a genteel American, my favorite 
color for clothes and hats being (and still is) dark brown. 
It became my dark hair well, I thought. The difference 
between taste and vulgar ostentation was coming slowly, 
but surely, I hope. I remember the passionate efforts 
I made to learn to tie a four-in-hand cravat, then a recent 
invention. I was forever watching and striving to imitate 
the dress and the ways of the well-bred American merchants 
with whom I was, or trying to be, thrown. All this, I felt, 
was an essential element in achieving business success; 
but the ambition to act and look like a gentleman grew 
in me quite apart from these motives. 

Now, Dora seemed to notice these things in me, and to 
like them. So I would parade my newly acquired manners 
before her as I did my neckties or my English vocabulary. 

260 


DORA 


After that lecture I gave her on adverbs she no longer 
called my English in question. To be educated and an 
“American lady” had, thanks to Lucy’s influence, become 
the great passion of her life. It almost amounted to an 
obsession. She thought me educated and a good deal of an 
American, so she looked up to me and would listen to my 
harangues reverently. 


CHAPTER X 


O NE Saturday evening she said to me: “Lord! you 
are so educated. I wish I had a head like yours.” 
‘‘Why, you have an excellent head, Dora,” I replied. 
“You have no reason to complain.” 

She sighed. 

“I wish I had not gone into business,” I resumed. 

I had already told her, more than once, in fact, how I 
had been about to enter college when an accident had led 
me astray; so I now referred to those events, dwelling regret- 
fully upon the sudden change I had made in my life plans. 

“It was the devil that put it in my head to become a 
manufacturer,” I said, bitterly, yet with relish in the 
‘ ‘ manufacturer. ’ ’ 

“Well, one can be a manufacturer and educated man 
at the same time,” she consoled me. 

“Of course. That’s exactly what I always say,” I re- 
turned, joyously. “Still, I wish I had stuck to my original 
plan. There was a lady in Antomir who advised me to 
prepare for college. She was always speaking to me about 
it.” 

It was about lo o’clock. Max was away to his dancing- 
schools. The children were asleep. We were alone in the 
living-room. 

I expected her to ask who that Antomir lady was, but she 
did not, so I went on speaking of Matilda of my own accord. 
I sketched her as an “aristocratic” young woman, the 
daughter of one of the leading families in town, accom- 
plished, clever, pretty, and “modem.” 

“It was she, in fact, who got me the money for my trip 
to America,” I said, lowering my voice, as one will when a 
conversation assumes an intimate character. 

“Was it?” Dora said, also in a low voice. 

"‘Yes. It is a long story. It is nearly five years since 
262 


DORA 


I left home, but I still think of it a good deal. Sometimes 
I feel as if my heart would snap unless I had somebody to 
tell about it.” 

This was my way of drawing Dora into a flirtation, my 
first attempt in that direction, though in my heart I had 
been making love to her for weeks. 

I told her the story of my acquaintance with Matilda. 
She listened with non-committal interest, with an amused, 
patronizing glimmer of a smile. 

“You did not fall in love with her, did you?” she quizzed 
me as she might Lucy. 

“That’s the worst part of it,” I said, ^avely. 

“Is it?” she asked, still gaily, but with frank interest 
now. 

I recoimted the episode at length. To put it in plain 
English, I was using my affair with Matilda (or shall I say 
her affair with me ?) as a basis for an adventure with Dora. 
At first I took pains to gloss over those details in which I 
had cut an undignified figure, but I soon dropped all em- 
bellishments. The episode stood out so bold in my memory, 
its appeal to my imagination was so poignant, that I found 
an intoxicating satisfaction in conveying the facts as faith- 
fully as I knew how. To be telling a complete, unvarnished 
truth is in itself a pleasure. It is as though there were a 
special sense of truth and sincerity in our make-up (just 
as there is a sense of musical harmony, for example), and 
the gratification of it were a source of delight. 

Nor was this my only motive for telling Dora all. I had 
long since realized that the disdain and mockery with 
which Matilda handled me had been but a cloak for her 
interest in my person. So when I was relating to Dora 
the scenes of my ignominy I felt that the piquant cir- 
cumstances surrounding them were not unfavorable to 
me. 

Anyhow, I was having a singularly intimate talk with 
Dora and she was listening with the profoundest interest, 
all the little tricks she employed to disguise it notwith- 
standing. 

In depicting the scene of the memorable night when 
Matilda came to talk to me at my bedside I emphasized 
the fact that she had called me a ninny. 

“I did not know what she meant,” I said. 

263 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 

Dora tittered, looking at the floor shamefacedly. “The 
nasty thing!” she said. 

“What do you mean?” I inquired, dishonestly. 

“I mean just what I say. She is a nasty thing, that 
grand lady of yours.” And she added another word — 
the East Side name for a woman of the streets — that gave 
me a shock. 

“Don’t call her that,” I entreated. “Please don’t. 
You are mistaken about her. I assure you she is a highly 
respectable lady. She has a heart of gold,” I added, 
irrelevantly. 

“Well, well! You are still in love with her, aren’t you?” 

I was tempted to say: “No. It is you I now love.” 
But I merely said, dolefully: “No. Not any more.” H! 

She contemplated me amusedly and broke into a soft 
laugh. 

The next time we were alone in the house I came back 
to it. I added some details. I found a lascivious interest 
in dwelling on our passionate kisses, Matilda’s and mine. 
Also, it gave me morbid pleasure to have her behold me at 
Matilda’s feet, lovelorn, disdained, crushed, yet coveted, 
kissed, triumphant. 

Dora listened intently. She strove to keep up an 
amused air, as though listening to some childish nonsense, 
but the look of her eye, tense or flinching, and the warm 
color that often overspread her cheeks, betrayed her. 


CHAPTER XI 


W E talked about my first love-affair for weeks. She 
asked me many questions about Matilda, mostly 
with that pretended air of amused curiosity. Every time 
I had something good to say about Matilda she would assail 
her brutally. 

The fact that Dora never referred to my story in the 
presence of her husband was a tacit confession that we had 
a secret from him. Outwardly it meant that the secret 
was mine, not hers; that she had nothing to do with it; 
but then there was another secret — ^the fact that she was 
my sole confidante in a matter of this nature — and this 
secret was ours in common. 

On one occasion, in the course of one of these confabs 
of ours, she said, with ill-concealed malice: 

“Do you really think she cared for you? Not that 
much,” marking off the tip of her little finger. 

“Why should you say that? Why should you hurt my 
feelings?” I protested. 

“It still hurts your feelings, then, does it? There is a 
faithful lover for you! But what would you have me say? 
That she loved you as much as you loved her?” 

At this Dora jerked her head backward, with a laugh that 
rang so charmingly false and so virulent that I was im- 
pelled both to slap her face and to kiss it. 

“But tell me,” she said, with a sudden affectation of 
sedate curiosity, “was she really so beautiful?” 

“I never said she was ‘so beautiful,’ did I? You are far 
more beautiful than she.” 

“Oh, stop joking, please! Can’t you answer seriously?’* 
“ I really mean it.” 

“Mean what?” 

“ That you are prettier than Matilda.” 

“Is that the way you are faithful to her?” 

I8 26s 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 


“Oh, that was five years ago. Now there is somebody 
<else I am faithful to.” 

She was silent. Her cheeks glowed. 

“Why don’t you ask who that somebody is?” 

“Because I don’t care. WTiat do I care? And please 
don’t talk like that. I mean what I say. You must 
promise me never to talk like that,” she said, gravely. 

During the following few days Dora firmly barred all 
more or less intimate conversation. She treated me with 
her usual friendly familiarity, but there was something new 
in her demeanor, something that seemed to say, “I don’t 
deny that I enjoy our talks, but that’s all the more reason 
why you must behave yourself.” 

The story of my childhood seemed legitimate enough, 
so she let me tell her bits of it, and before she was aware 
of it she was following my childish love-affair with the 
daughter of one of my despotic school-teachers, my struggles 
with Satan, and my early dreams of marriage. Gradually 
.she let me draw her out concerning her own past. 

One evening, while Lucy was playing school-teacher, with 
Dannie for the class, Dora told me of an episode connected 
with her betrothal to Max. 

“Was that a love match?” I asked, with a casual air, 
when she had finished. 

She winced. “What difference does it make?” she said, 
with an annoyed look. “We were engaged as most couples 
are engaged. Much I knew of the love business in those 
days.” 

“You speak as though you married when you were a 
mere baby. You certainly knew how you felt toward 
him.” 

“ I don’t think I felt anything,” she answered. 

“Still,” I insisted, “you said to yourself, ‘This man is 
going to be my husband; he will kiss me, embrace me.’ 
How did you feel then?” 

“You want to know too much, Levinsky,” she said, 
coloring. “You know the saying, ‘If you know too much 
you get old too quick.’ Well, I don’t think I gave him any 
thought at all. I was too busy thinking of the wedding 
and of the pretty dress they were making for me. Besides, 

266 


DORA 

I was so rattled and so shy. Much I understood. I was 
not quite nineteen.” 

It called to my mind that in the excitement following my 
mother’s death I was so overwhelmed by the attentions 
showered on me that it was a day or two before I realized 
the magnitude of my calamity. 

“Anyhow, you certainly knew that marriage is the most 
serious thing in life,” I persisted. 

“Oh, I don’t think I knew much of an3rthing.” 

“And after the wedding?” 

“After the wedding I £iew that I was a married woman 
and must be contented,” she parried. 

“But this is not love,” I pressed her. 

“Oh, let us not talk of these things, pray! Don’t ask 
me questions like that,” she said in a low, entreating voice. 
“It isn’t right.” 

“I don’t know if it is right or wrong,” I replied, also in 
a low voice.' “All I do Imow is that I am interested in 
everything that ever happened to you.” 

Silence fell. She was the first to break it. She tried 
to talk of trivialities. I scarcely listened. She broke off 
again. 

“Dora!” 1 said, amorously. “My heart is so full.” 

“Don’t,” she whispered, with a gestiue of pained sup- 
plication. “Talk of something else, pray.” 

“I can’t. I can’t talk of anything else. Nor think of 
anything else, either.” 

“You mustn’t, you mustn’t, you mustn’t,” she said, with 
sudden vehemence, though still with a beseeching ring in 
her voice. “I won’t let you. May I not live to see my 
children again if I will. Do you hear, Levinsky? Do you 
hear? Do you hear? I want you to understand it. Be a 
man. Have a heart, Levinsky. You must behave your- 
self. If you don’t you’ll have to move. There can’t be 
any other way about it. If you are a real friend of mine, 
not an enemy, you must behave yourself.” She spoke 
with deep, solemn earnestness, somewhat in the singsong 
of a woman reading the Yiddish Commentary on the Five 
Books of Moses or wailing over a grave. She went on: 
“Why should you vex me? You are a respectable man. 
You don’t want to do what is wrong. You don’t want to 
make me miserable, do you? So be good, Levinsky. I 

267 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 

beg of you. I beg of you. Be good. Be good. Be good. 
Let us never have another talk like this. Do you promise ? ’ ' 

I was silent. 

“Do you promise, Levinsky? You must. You must. 
Do you promise me never to come back to this kind of 
talk?” 

“I do,” I said, like a guilty school-boy. 

She was terribly in earnest. She almost broke my heart. 
I could not thwart her will. 

She was in love with me. 

Days passed. There was no lack of tmspoken tenderness 
between us. That she was tremulously glad to see me every 
time I came home was quite obvious, but she bore herself 
in such a manner that I never ventured to allude to my 
feeling, much less to touch her hand or sit close to her. 

“It is as well that I should not,” I often said to myself. 
“Am I not happy as it is? Is it not bliss enough to have a 
home — ^her home? It would be too awful to forfeit it.” 
I registered a vow to live up to the promise she had exacted 
from me, but I knew that I would break it. 

She was in love with me. She had an iron will, but I 
hoped that this, too, would soon be broken. 

There were moments when I would work myself up to 
an exalted, religious kind of mood over it. “I should 
be a vile creature if I interfered with the peace of this 
house,” I would exhort myself, passionately. “Max has 
been a warm friend to me. Oh, I will be good.” 

Dora talked less than usual. She, too, seemed to be a 
changed person. She was particularly taciturn when we 
happened to be alone in the house, and then it would be dif- 
ficult for us to look each other in the face. Such tdte-^- 
t^tes occurred once or twice a week, quite late in the 
evening. I was very busy at the shop and I could never 
leave it before lo, ii, or even 12, except on Sabbath 
eve (Friday night), when it was closed. On those even- 
ings when Max stayed out very late I usually found her 
alone in the little dining-room, sewing, mending, or — 
more often — ^poring over Lucy’s school reader or story- 
book. 

After exchanging a few perfunctory sentences with her, 
each of us aware of the other’s embarrassment, I would 

268 


DORA 


take a seat a considerable distance from her and take up 
a newspaper or clipping from one, while she went on with 
her work or reading. Lucy had begun to take juvenile 
books out of the circulating library of the Educational 
Alliance, so her mother would read them also. The words 
were all short and simple and Dora had not much difficulty 
in deciphering their meaning. Anyhow, she now never 
sought my assistance for her reading. I can still see her 
seated at the table, a considerable distance from me, moving 
her head from word to word and from line to line, and 
silently working her lips, as though muttering an incan- 
tation. I would do her all sorts of little services (though 
she never asked for any), all silently, softly, as if performing 
a religious rite. 

I have said that on such occasions I would read my news- 
paper or some clipping from it. In truth I read little else 
in those days. Editorials of the daily press interested 
me as much as the most sensational news, and if some of 
the more important leading articles in my paper had to be 
left unread on the day of their publication I would clip 
them and glance them over at the next leisirre moment, 
sometimes days later. 

The financial column was followed by me with a sense of 
being a member of a caste for which it was especially in- 
tended, to the exclusion of the rest of the world. At first 
the jargon of that coliunn made me feel as though I had 
never learned any English at all. But I was making head- 
way in this jargon, too, and when I struck a recondite 
sentence I would cut the few lines out and put them in my 
pocket, on the chance of coming across somebody who 
could interpret them for me. Often, too, I would clip 
and put away a paragraph containing some curious piece 
of information or a bit of English that was an addition to 
my knowledge of the language. My inside pocket was 
always full of all sorts of clippings. 


CHAPTER XII 


I T was about this time that I found myself confronted 
with an unexpected source of anxiety in my business 
affairs. There were several circumstances that made it 
possible for a financial midget like myself to outbid the 
lions of the cloak-and-suit industry. Now, however, a new 
circumstance arose which threatened to rob me of my 
chief advantage and to undermine the very foimdation of 
my future. 

The rent of my loft, which was in the slums, was, com- 
paratively speaking, a mere trifle, while my overhead 
expense amounted to scarcely anything at all. I did my 
own bookkeeping, and a thirteen-year-old girl. American- 
born, school-bred, and bright, whose bewigged mother was 
one of my finishers, took care of the shop while I was out, 
helped me with my mail, and sewed on buttons between- 
whiles — all for fom dollars a week. Another finisher, a 
young widow, saved me the expense of a figure woman. 
To which should be added that I did business on a profit 
margin far beneath the consideration of the well-known 
firms. All this, however, does not include the most 
important of all the items that gave me an advantage over 
the princes of the trade. That was cheap labor. 

Three of my men were excellent tailors. They could 
have easily procured employment in some of the largest 
factories, where they would have been paid at least twice as 
much as I paid them. They were bewhiskered, elderly 
people, strictly orthodox and extremely old-fashioned as to 
dress and habits. They felt perfectly at home in my shop, 
and would rather work for me and be underpaid than be 
employed in an up-to-date factory where a tailor was 
expected to wear a starched collar and necktie and was 
made the butt of ridicule if he covered his head every time 
he took a drink of water. These, however, were minor 

270 


DORA 


advantages. The important thing, the insurmountable 
obstacle which kept these three skilled tailors away from 
the big cloak-shops, was the fact that one had to work on 
Saturda}^ there, while in my place one could work on 
Sunday instead of Sattu-day. 

My pressers were of the same class as my tailors. As 
for my operators, who were younger fellows and had adopted 
American ways, my shop had other attractions for them. 
For example, my operations were limited to a very small 
niunber of styles, and, as theirs was piece-work, it meant 
greater earnings. While the employee of a Broadway 
firm (or of one of its contractors) was engaged on a large 
variety of garments, being continually shifted from one 
kind of work to another, a man working for me would 
be taken up with the same style for many days in succession, 
thus developing a much higher rate of speed and a fatter 
pay-envelope. 

Altogether, I always contrived to proctire the cheapest 
labor obtainable, although this, as we have seen, by no 
means implied that my “hands” were inferior mechanics.. 
The sum and substance of it all was that I could afford ta 
sell a garment for less than what was its cost of production 
in the best-known cloak-houses. 

My business was making headway when the Cloak and 
Suit Makers’ Union sprang into life again, with the usual 
rush and commotion, but with unusual portents of strength 
and stability. It seemed as if this time it had come to stay. 
My budding little establishment was too small, in fact, to 
be in immediate danger. It was one of a scattered number 
of insignificant places which the union found it difficult to 
control. Still, cheap labor being my chief excuse for beings 
the organization caused me no end of worry. 

“Just when a fellow is beginning to make a living all sorts 
of black dreams will come along and trip him up,” I com- 
plained to Meyer Nodelman, bitterly. “A bunch of good- 
for-nothings, too lazy to work, will stir up trouble, and there 
you are.” 

“Oh, it won’t last long,” Meyer Nodelman consoled me. 
“Don’t be excited, anyhow. Business does not always go 
like grease, you know. You must be ready for trouble 
too.” 

He told me of his own experiences with unions and he 
271 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 


drifted into a philosophic view of the matter. “You and I 
want to make as much money as possible, don’t we?” he 
said. “Well, the working-men want the same. Can you 
blame them? We are fighting them and they are fighting 
us. The world is not a wedchng-feast, Levinsky. It is a 
big bam-yard full of chickens and they are scratching one 
another, and scrambling oyer one another. Why? Be- 
cause there are little heaps of grain in the yard and each 
chicken wants to get as much of it as possible. So let us 
try our best. But why be mad at the other chickens? 
Scratch away, Levinsky, but what’s the use being excited?” 

He gave a chuckle, and I could not help smiling, but at 
heart I was bored and wretched. 

The big manufacturers could afford to pay union wages, 
yet they were fighting tooth and nail, and I certainly could 
not afford to pay high wages. If I had to, I should have to 
get out of business. 

Officially mine had become a union shop, yet my men 
continued to work on non-union terms. They made con- 
siderably more money by working for non-union wages than 
they would in the places that were \mder stringent union 
supervision. They could work any number of hours in my 
shop, and that was what my piece-workers wanted. To toil 
from sunrise till long after sunset was what every tailor was 
accustomed to in Antomir, for instance. Only over there 
one received a paltry few shillings at the end of the week, 
while I paid my men many dollars. 

So far, then, I had been successful in eluding the vigilance 
of the walking delegates and my shop was in full blast 
from 5 in the morning to midnight, whereas in the 
genuine union shops the regular workday was restricted 
to ten hoFirs, and overtime to three, which, coupled with 
the especial advantage accruing from a limited munber of 
styles handled, made my shop a desirable place to my 
“hands.” 

A storm broke. All cloak-manufacturers formed a coali- 
tion and locked out their union men. A bitter struggle 
ensued. As it was rich in quaint “ human-natiu*e ” ma- 
terial, the newspapers bestowed a good deal of space 
upon it. 

I made a pretense of joining in the lockout, my men 
272 


DORA 

clandestinely continuing to work for me. More than that 
my working force was trebled, for, besides filling my own 
orders, I did some of the work of a well-known firm which 
found It much more difficult to procure non-union labor than 
I did. What was a great calamity to the trade in general 
seemed to be a source of overwhelming prosperity to me. 
But the golden windfall did not last long. The agitation 
and the picketing activities of the union, aided by the 
Arheiter Zeitung, a Yiddish socialist weekly, were spreading 
a spell of enthusiasm (or fear) to which my men gradually 
succumbed. My best operator, a young fellow who ex- 
ercised much influence over his shopmates and who had 
hitherto been genuinely devoted to me, became an ardent 
convert to union principles and led all my operatives out of 
the shop. I organized a shop elsewhere, but it was soon 
discovered. 

Somebody must have reported to the editor of the 
Arheiter Zeitung that at one time I had been a member of 
the union myself, for that weekly published a scurrilous 
paragraph, branding me as a traitor. 

I read the paragraph with mixed rage and pain, and yet 
the sight of my name in print flattered my vanity, and 
when the heat of my fury subsided I became conscious of a 
sneaking feeling of gratitude to the socialist editor for 
printing the attack on me. For, behold! the same organ 
assailed the Vanderbilts, the Goulds, the Rothschilds, and 
by calling me “a fleecer of labor” it placed me in their 
class. I felt in good company. I felt, too, that while 
there were people by whom “fleecers” were cursed, there 
were many others who held them in high esteem, and that 
even those who cursed them had a secret envy for them, 
hoping some day to be fleecers of labor like them. 

The only thing in that paragraph that galled me was the 
appellation of “cockroach manufacturer” by which it re- 
ferred to me. I was going to parade the “quip” before 
Max and Dora, but thought better of it. The notion of 
Dora hearing me called “cockroach” made me squirm. 

But Max somehow got wind of the paragraph, and one 
evening as I came home for supper he said, good-naturedly : 

“You got a spanking, didn’t you ? I have seen what they 
say in the Arheiter Zeitung about you.” 

“Oh. to the eighty black years with them!” I answered, 

273 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 


blushing, and hastened to switch the conversation to the 
lockout and strike in general. “Oh, we’ll get all the men 
we want,’’ I said. “It’s only a matter of time. We’ll 
teach these scoundrels a lesson they’ll never forget.” 

“If only you maniifacturers stick together.” 

“You bet we will. We can wait. We are in no hurry. 
We can wait till those tramps come begging for a job,” I 
said. For the benefit of Dora I added a little disquisition 
on the opportunities America offered to every man who had 
brains and industry, and on the grudge which men like 
myself were apt to arouse in lazy fellows. “Those union 
leaders have neither brains nor a desire to work. That’s 
why they can’t work themselves up,” I said. “Yes, and 
that’s why they begrudge those who can. All those 
scoundrels are able to do is to hatch trouble.” 

I spoke as if I had been a capitalist of the higher altitudes 
and of long standing. That some of the big cloak firms 
had promised to back me with funds to keep me from 
yielding to the union I never mentioned. 


CHAPTER XIII 


M y shop being practically closed, I was at home most 
of the time, not only in the evening, but many a 
forenoon or afternoon as well. Dora and I would hold 
interminable conversations. Our love was never alluded to. 
A relationship on new terms seemed to have been estab- 
lished between us. It was as if she were saying: “Now, 
isn’t this better? Why can’t we go on like this forever?” 

Sometimes I would watch her read with Lucy. Or else 
I would take up a newspaper or a book and sit reading it 
at the same table. Dora was making rapid headway in her 
studies. It- Was July and Lucy was free from school, 
so she would let her spend many an hour in the street, but 
she caused her to spend a good deal of time with her, too. 
If she did not read with her she would talk or listen to her. 
I often wondered whether it was for fear of being too 
much thrown into my company that she would make the 
child stay indoors. At all events, her readings, spelling 
contests, or talks with Lucy bore perceptible fruit. Her 
English seemed to be improving every day, so much so that 
we gradually came to use a good deal of that language even 
when we were alone in the house; even when every word 
we said had an echo of intimacy with which the tongue 
we w'ere learning to speak seemed to be out of accord. 

One evening mother and daughter sat at the open parlor 
window. While I was reclining in an easy-chair at the 
other end of the room Lucy was narrating something and 
Dora was listening, apparently with rapt attention. I 
watched, their profiles. Finally I said: 

“She must be telling you something important, consider- 
ing the interest you are taking in it.” 

“Everything she says is important to me,” Dora an- 
swered. 

“What has she been telling you?” 

275 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 


“Oh, about her girls, about their brothers and their base- 
ball games, about lots of things,” she said, with a far-away- 
tone in her voice. “I want to know evei^hing about her. 
Everything. I wish I could get right into her. I wish 
I could be a child like her. Oh, why can’t a person be bom 
over again?” 

Her longing ejaculation had perhaps more to do with 
her feelings for me than with her feelings for her child. 
Anyhow, what she said about her being interested in 
ever5rthing that Lucy had to say was tme. And, whether 
she listened to the child’s prattle or not, it always seemed 
to me as though she absorbed every English word Lucy ut- 
tered and every American gesture she made. The American 
school-girl raiated a subtle influence, a spiritual ozone, 
which her mother breathed in greedily. 

“My own life is lost, but she shall be educated” — 
these words dropped from her lips quite often. On one 
occasion they came from her with a modification that lent 
them imusual meaning. It was on a Friday evening. Max 
was out, as usual, and the children were asleep, “ My own 
life is lost, but Lucy shall be happy,” she said. 

‘ ‘ Why ?” I said, feelingly. * ‘ Why should you think your- 
self lost? I can’t bear it, Dora.” 

She made no answer. I attempted to renew the con- 
versation, but without avail. She answered in melancholy 
monosyllables and my voice had a constrained note. 

At last I burst out, in our native tongue: “Why do you 
torture me, Dora ? Why don’t you let me talk and pour my 
heart out?” 

“’S-sh! You mustn’t,” she said, peremptorily, also in 
Yiddish. “You’ll get me in trouble if you do. It ’ll be 
the ruin of me and of the children, too. You mustn’t.” 

“But you say your life is lost,” I retorted, coming up 
close to the chair on which she sat. “Do you think it’s 
easy for me to hear it? Do you think my heart is made 
of iron?” 

“’S-sh! You know everything without my speaking,” 
she said, slowly rising and dmwing back. “You know well 
enough that I am not happy. Can’t you rest until you 
have heard me say so again and again? Must you dnnk 
my blood? All right, then. Go ahead. Here. I am un- 
happy, I am unhappy, I am unhappy. Max is a good hus- 
276 


DORA 


band to me. I can’t complain. And we get along well, 
too. And I shall be true to him. May I choke right here, 
may darkness come upon me, if I ever cease to be a faith- 
ful wife to him. But you know that my heart has never 
been happy. Lucy will be happy and that will be my hap- 
piness, too. She shall go to college and be an educated 
American lady, and, if God lets me live, I shall see to it 
that she doesn’t marry imless she meets the choice of her 
heart. She must be happy. She must make up for her 
mother’s lost Hfe, too. If my mother had understood 
things as I do, I, too, should have been happy. But she was 
an old-fashioned woman and she would have me marry in 
the old-fashioned way, as she herself had married: without 
laying her eyes on her ‘ predestined one ’ until the morning 
after the wedding.” She laughed bitterly. “Of course 
I did see Max before the wedding, but it made no difference. 
I obeyed my mother, peace upon her soul. I thought love- 
marriages were something which none but educated girls 
could dream of. My mother — ^peace upon her soul — ^told 
me to throw all fancies out of my mind, that I was a 
simple girl and must get married without fuss. And I did. 
In this country people have different notions. But I am 
already married and a mother. All I can do now is to see 
to it that Lucy shall be both educated and happy, and, 
well, I beg of you, I beg of you, I beg of you, Levinsky, 
never let me talk of these things again. They must be 
locked up in my heart and the key must be thrown into the 
river, Levinsky. It cannot be otherwise, Levinsky. Do 
you hear?” 


CHAPTER XIV 


T he situation could not last. 

One morning about three weeks subsequent to the 
above conversation Max left town for a day. One of 
his debtors, a dancing-master, had disappeared without 
settling his account and Max had recently discovered that 
he was running a dance-hall and meeting-rooms in New 
Haven; so he went there to see what he could do toward 
collecting his bill. His absence for a whole day was nothing 
new, and yet the house seemed to have assumed a novel 
appearance that morning. When, after breakfast, Lucy ran 
out into the street I felt as though Dora and I were alone 
for the first time, and from her constraint I could see that 
she was experiencing a similar feeling. I hung aroimd the 
house awl^ardly. She was trying to keep herself busy. 
Finally I said: 

“ I think I’ll be going. Maybe there is some news about 
the lockout.” 

I rose to go to the little corridor for my hat, but on my 
way thither, as I came abreast of her, I paused, and with 
amorous mien I drew her to me. 

She made but a perfunctory attempt at resistance, and 
when I kissed her she responded, our lips clinging together 
himgrily. It aU seemed to have happened in a most 
natural way. When oiu* lips parted at last her cheeks 
were deeply flushed and her eyes looked filmed. 
“Dearest,” I whispered. 

“I must go out,” she said, shrinking back, her embar- 
rassed gaze on the floor. “I have some marketing to do.” 

“ Don’t. Don’t go away from me, Dora. Please don’t,” 
I said in Yiddish, with the least bit of authority. “I love 
thee. I love thee, Dora,” I raved, for the first time ad- 
dressing her in the familiar pronoun. 

“You ought not to speak to me like that,” she said, 
278 


DORA 

limply, with frank happiness in her voice. “It’s terrible. 
What has got into me?” 

I strained her to me once again, and again we abandoned 
ourselves to a transport of kisses and hugs. 

“Dost thou love me, Dora? Tell me. I want to hear 
it from thine own lips.” 

She slowly drew me to her bosom and clasped me with 
all her might. That was her answer to my question. 
Then, with a hurried parting kiss on my forehead, she said: 

“Go. Attend to business, dearest.” 

As I walked through the street I was all but shouting 
to myself: “Dora has kissed me! Dora dear is mine!” 
My heart was dancing with joy over my conquest of her, 
and at the same time I felt that I was almost ready to 
lay down my life for her. It was a blend of animal selfish- 
ness and spiritual sublimity. I really loved her. 

I attended to my affairs (that is, to some of the affairs 
of the Manufacturers’ Organization) that day; but while 
thus engaged I was ever tremulously conscious of my 
happiness, ever in an uplifted state of mind. I was bub- 
bling over with a desire to be good to somebody, to every- 
body — except, of course, the Cloak-makers’ Union. My 
membership in the Manufacturers’ Association flattered 
my vanity inordinately, and I always danced attendance 
upon the other members, the German Jews, the big men 
of the trade; now, however, I ran their errands with an 
alacrity that was not mere servility. 

I was constantly aware of the fact that this was my 
second love-affair, as if it were something to be proud of. 
My love for Matilda was remote as a piece of art, while my 
passion for Dora was a flaming reality. “Matilda only 
tortured me,” I said to myself, without malice. “She 
treated me as she would a dog, whereas Dora is an angel. 
I would jump into fire for her. Dora dear! Sweetheart 
mine!” I had not the patience to wait until evening. I 
ran in to see her in the middle of the day. 

She flimg herself at me and we embraced and kissed as 
if we had been separated for years. Then, holding me by 
both hands, she gave me a long look full of pensive bliss 
and clasped me to her bosom again. When she had calmed 
down she smoothed my hair, adjusted my necktie, told me 
she did not like it and offered to get me one more becoming. 

279 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 

‘ ‘ Do you love me ? Do you really ?” she asked, with deep 
earnestness. 

“I do, I do. Dora mine, I am crazy for you,” I replied. 
“ Now I know what real love means.” 

She sighed, and after a pause her grave, strained mien 
broke into a smile. 

‘‘So all you told me about Matilda was a lie, was it?” 
she said, roguishly. “ There is no such person in the world, 
is there?” 

” Don’t talk about her, pray. You don’t understand me. 
I never was happy before. Never in my life.” 

‘‘Never at all?” she questioned me, earnestly. 

“Never, Dora dearest. Anyhow, let bygones be by- 
gones. All I know is that I love you, that I am going crazy 
for you. Oh, I do love you.” 

“And nobody else?” 

“And nobody else.” 

“And you are not lying?” 

“Lying? Why should you talk like that, dearest?” 

“Why, have you forgotten Matilda so soon?” 

“Do you call that soon? It’s more than five years.” 

“But you told me that you had been in love with her 
a considerable time after you came to this country. Will 
you forget me so soon, too?” 

I squirmed, I writhed. “Don’t be tormenting me, 
dearest,” I implored, my voice quavering with impatience. 
“I love thee and nobody else.” 

She fell into a muse. Then she said, with a far-away 
look in her eyes: 

“ I don’t know where this will land me. It seems as if a 
great misfortune had befallen me. But I don’t care. I 
don’t care. I don’t care. Come what may. I can’t help 
it. At last I know what it means to be happy. I have been 
dreaming of it all my life. Now I know what it is like, 
and I am willing to stiff er for it. Yes, I am willing to suffer 
for you, Levinsky.” She spoke with profound, even- 
voiced earnestness, with peculiar solemnity, as though 
chanting a prayer. I was somewhat bored. Presently she 
paused, and, changing her tone, she asked: “Matilda 
talked to you of education. She wanted you to be an 
educated man, did she? Yes, but what did she do for 
you? She drank your blood, the leech, and when she got 
280 


DORA 


, tired of it she dropped you. A woman like that ought to 
be tom to pieces. May every bit of the suifering she 
caused you come back, to her a thousandfold. May her 
blood be shed as she shed yours.” Suddenly she checked 
herself and said: “But, no, I am not going to curse her. I 
don’t want you to think badly of her. Your love must be 
sacred, Levinsky. If you ever go back on me and love 
somebody else, don’t let her curse me. Don’t let anybody 
say a cross word about me.” 

Max came home after midnight and I did not see him 
until the next evening. When we met at supper (Dora 
was out at that moment) I had to make an effort to meet 
his eye. But he did not seem to notice anything out of the 
usual, and my awkwardness soon wore off. 

Nor, indeed, was there any change in my feelings toward 
him. I had expected that he would now be hateful to me. 
He was not. He was absolutely the same man as he had 
always been, except, perhaps, that I vaguely felt like a 
thief in his presence. Only I hated to think of Dora 
while I looked at him. 

Presently Dora made her appearance. My embarrass- 
ment returned, more acute than ever. The consciousness 
of her confusion and, above all, the consciousness of the 
three of us being together, was insupportable. It was a 
terrible repast, though Max was absolutely unaware of 
anything imnatiual in our demeanor. I retired to my 
room soon after supper. 

I had a what-not half filled with books, so I drew a 
volume from it. I found it difficult to get my mind on it. 
My thoughts were circling round Dora and Max, round 
my precarious happiness, round the novelty of carrying 
on a romantic conspiracy with a married woman. Dora 
was so dear to me. I seemed to be vibrating with devotion 
to her. Regardless of the fact that she was somebody else’s 
wife and a mother of two children, my love impressed me as 
something sacred. I seemed to accept the general rule that 
a wife-stealer is a despicable creature, a thief, a vile, im- 
moral wretch. But now, that I was not facing Max, that 
rule, somehow, did not apply to my relations with Dora. 
Simultaneously with this feeling I had another one which 
excused my conduct on the theory that everybody was at 
the bottom of his heart likewise ready to set that rule 

19 281 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 

at defiance and to make a mistress of his friend’s wife, 
provided it could be done with absolute secrecy and safety. 
Max in my place would certainly not have scrupled to act 
as I did. But then I hated to think of him in this con- 
nection. I would brush all thoughts of him aside as I would 
a vicious fly. I was too selfish to endure the pain even of a 
moment’s compunction. I treated myself as a doting 
mother does a wayward son. 

The book in my hands was the first volume of Herbert 
Spencer’s Sociology. My interest in this author and in 
Darwin was of recent origin. It had been bom of my 
hatred for the Cloak-makers’ Union, in fact. This is how 
I came to discover the existence of the two great names and 
to develop a passion for the ideas with which they are 
identified. 

In my virulent criticism of the leaders of the union I had 
often characterized them as so many good-for-nothings, 
jealous of those who had succeeded in business by their 
superior brains, industry, and efficiency. One day I found 
a long editorial in my newspaper, an answer to a letter from 
a socialist. The editorial derived its inspiration from the 
theory of the Stmggle for Existence and the Survival of 
the Fittest. Unlike many of the other editorials I had 
read, it breathed conviction. It was obviously a work of 
love. When the central idea of the argiunent came home 
to me I was in a turmoil of surprise and elation. “Why, 
that’s just what I have been sa)dng all these days!’’ I ex- 
claimed in my heart. “The able fellows succeed, and 
the misfits fail. Then the misfits begrudge those who ac- 
complish things.’’ I almost felt as though Darwin and 
Spencer had plagiarized a discovery of mine. Then, as I 
visuahzed the Stmggle for Existence, I recalled Meyer 
Nodelman’s parable of chickens fighting for food, and it 
seemed to me that, between the two of us, Nodelman and 
I had hit upon the whole Darwinian doctrine. Later, 
however, when I dipped into Social Statics, I was over- 
borne by the wondrous novelty of the thing and by a sense 
of my own futility, ignorance, and cheapness. I felt at the 
gates of a great world of knowledge whose existence I had 
not even suspected. I had to read the Origin of Species and 
the Descent of Man, and then Spencer again. I sat up nights 
282 


DORA 


reading these books. Apart from the purely intellectual 
intoxication they gave me, they flattered my vanity as one 
of the “fittest.” It was as though all the wonders of 
learning, aciunen, ingenuity, and assiduity displayed in 
these works had been intended, among other purposes, to 
establish my title as one of the victors of Existence. 

A working-man, and every one else who was poor, was an 
object of contempt to me — a misfit, a weakling, a failure, 
one of the ruck. 


CHAPTER XV - 


I T was August. In normal times this would have been 
the beginning of the great “winter season” in our trade. 
As it was, the deadlock continued. The stubbornness of 
the men, far from showing signs of wilting under the 
strain of so many weeks of enforced idleness and suffering, 
seemed to be gathering strength, while our own people, 
the manufacturers, were frankly weakening. The danger 
of having the great season pass without one being able to 
fill a single order overcame the fighting blood of the most 
pugnacious among them. One was confronted with the 
risk of losing one’s best customers. The trade threatened 
to pass from New York to Philadelphia and Chicago. If 
you called the attention of a manufacturer to the unyield- 
ing courage of the workmen, the reply invariably was, first, 
that it was all mere bravado; and, second, that, anyhow, 
the poor devils had nothing to lose, while the manufacturers 
had their investments to lose. 

The press supported the strikers. It did so, not because 
they were working-people, but because they were East- 
Siders. Their district was the great field of activity for 
the American University Settlement worker and fashion- 
able slummer. The East Side was a place upon which one 
descended in quest of esoteric types and “local color,” as 
well as for piuposes of philanthropy and “uplift” work. 
To spend an evening in some East Side caf6 was regarded 
as something like spending a few hours at the Louvre; 
so much so that one such caf6, in the depth of East Houston 
Street, was making a fortune by purveying expensive wine 
dinners to people from up-town who came there ostensibly 
to see “how the other half lived,” but who only saw one 
another eat and drink in freedom from the restraint of 
manners. Accordingly, to show S5mipathy for East Side 
strikers was within the bounds of the highest propriety. 

284 


DORA 


It was as “correct” as belonging to the Episcopal Church. 
And so public opinion was wholly on the side of the Cloak- 
makers’ Union. This hastened the end. We succiunbed. 
A settlement was patched up. We were beaten. But 
even this did not appease the men. They repudiated the 
agreement between their organization and ours, branding 
it as a trap, and the strike was continued. Then the manu- 
facturers yielded completely, acceding to every demand of 
the union. 

I became busy. I continued to curse the union, but at 
the bottom of my heart I wished it well, for the vigor with 
which it enforced its increased wage scale in all larger 
factories gave me greater advantages than ever. I was 
still able to get men who were willing to trick the organiza- 
tion. Every Friday afternoon these men received pay- 
envelopes which bore figures in strict conformity with the 
union’s schedule, but the contents of which were consid- 
erably below the siun marked outside. Subsequently this 
proved to be a risky practice to pursue, for the walking 
delegates were wide awake and apt to examine the en- 
velopes as the operatives were emerging from the shop. 
Accordingly, I adopted another system: the men would 
receive the union pay in full, but on the following Monday 
each of them would pay me back the difference between the 
official and the actual wage. The usual practice was for 
the employee to put the few dollars into his little wage- 
book, which he would then place on my desk for the os- 
tensible purpose of having his account verified. 

By thus cheating the union I could now imdersell the 
bigger manufacturers more easily than I had been able to 
do previous to the lockout and strike. I had more orders 
than I could fill. Money was coming in in floods. 

The lockout and the absolute triumph of the union was 
practically the making of me. 

I saw much less of Dora than I had done during the five 
months of the lockout, and our happiness when we man- 
aged to be left alone was all the keener for it. Our best 
time for a t^te-^-t^te were the hours between lo and 12 
on the evenings, when Max was sure to be away at his 
dancing-schools, but then it often happened that those were 
among my busiest hours at the shop. Sometimes I would 

285 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 


snatch half an hotir from my work in the middle of a busy 
day to surprise her with my caresses. If a week passed 
without my doing so she would ptmish me with mute scenes 
of jealousy, of which none but she and I were aware. She 
would avoid looking at me, and I would press my hand to 
my heart and raise a pleading gaze at her, which said: 

“I couldn’t get away, dearest. Honest, I couldn’t.” 

One evening I bought her some roses. As I carried them 
home I was thrilled as much by the fact that I, David of 
Abner’s Com*t, was taking flowers to a lady as I was by 
visioning the moment when I should hand them to Dora. 
When I came home and put. my offering into her hand she 
was in a flurry of delight over it, but she was scared to 
death lest it should betray our secret. After giving way 
to bursts of admiration for the flowers and myself, and 
smelling her fill, and covering me with kisses, she burned 
the bouquet in the stove and forbade me to use this method 
of showing her attention again. 

“Your dear eyes are the best flowers you can bring me,” 
she said. 

Her love burned with a steady flame, bright and even. 
It manifested itself in a thousand little things which she 
did for the double propose of ministering to my comfort 
and keeping me in mind of herself. I felt it in the taste 
of the coffee I drank, in the quality of my cup and saucer, 
in the painstaking darning on my socks, in the frequency 
with which my room was swept, my towel changed, my 
books dusted. 

“Did you notice the new soap-dish on your wash- 
stand?” she asked me, one morning. “Do you deserve it? 
Do you know how often I am in your room every day? 
Just guess.” 

“A million times a day.” 

“ To you it’s a joke. But if you loved as I do you would 
not be up to joking.” 

“Very well. I’ll cry.” And I personated a boy crying. 

“Don’t. It breaks my heart,” she said, earnestly. “I 
can’t see you crying even for fun.” She kissed my eyes. 
“No, really, I go to your room twenty times a day, per- 
haps. When I am there it seems to me that I am nearer 
to you. I kiss the pillow on which you sleep. I pat the 
blanket, the pitcher, every book of yours — everything your 


DORA 


dear little hands touch. I want you to know it. I want 
you to know how I love you. I knew that love was sweet, 
but I never knew that it was so sweet. Oh, my loved one !” 

She would pour out all sorts of endearments on me, some 
of them rather of a fantastic nature, but “my loved one” 
became her favorite appellation, while I found special relish 
in calling her “my bride” or “bridie mine.” 

I can almost feel her white fingers as they played with 
my abundant dark hair or rested on my shoulders while she 
looked into my eyes and murmured, yearningly: “ My loved 
one! My loved one! My loved one!” 

The set of my shoulders was a special object of her 
admiration. She would shake them tenderly, call me 
monkey, and ask me if I realized how much she loved me 
and if I deserved it all, bad boy that I was. 

She held me in check with an iron hand. Whenever 
my caresses threatened to overstep the bounds of what she 
termed “respectable love” she would stop them. With 
clouded eyes she would slap my hand and then kiss it,, 
^ying: 

“Be a gentleman, Levinsky. Be a gentleman. Can’t 
you be a gentleman?” 

“Oh, you don’t love me,” I would grunt. 

“I don’t? I don’t? I wish you would love me half as 
much,” with a sigh. “If you did you would not behave 
the way you do. That’s all your love amounts to — ^behav- 
ing like that. All men are hogs, after all.” With which 
she wotild take to lecturing me and pouring out her in- 
fatuated heart in that solemn singsong of hers, which some- 
what bored me. 

If she thought my kisses unduly passionate and the 
amorous look of my eye dangerous she would move away 
from me. 

“Don’t be angry at me, sweetheart,” she would say, 
cooingly. 

“I am not angry, but you don’t love me.” 

“Why should you hurt my feelings like that? Why 
should you shed my blood? Am I not yours, heart and 
soul? Am I not ready to cut myself to pieces to please 
you? Why should you tortme me?” 

“What are you afraid of? He won’t know any more 
than he does now,” I once urged. 

287 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 

She blushed, looking at the floor. After a minute's 
silence she said, dolefully: 

“ It isn’t so much on accoimt of that as on account of the 
children. How could I look Lucy in the face?” 

Her eyes grew humid. My heart went out to her. 

“ I imderstand. You are right,” I 5delded. 

The scene repeated itself not many days after. It oc- 
curred again and again at almost regular intervals. She 
fought bravely. 

Many months passed, and still she was able “to look 
Lucy in the face.” 

At first, for a period of six or seven weeks, my moral 
conduct outside the house was immaculate. Then I re- 
newed my excursions to certain streets. I made rather 
frequent calls at the apartment of a handsome Hungarian 
woman who called herself Cleo. Once, in a frenzy, I tried 
to imagine that she was Dora, and then I experienced 
qualms of abject compunction and self-loathing. 

Sometimes Lucy would arouse my jealous rancor, as a 
living barrier between her mother and myself. But she 
was really dear to me. I revered Dora for her fortitude, 
and Lucy appealed to me as the embodiment of her mother’s 
saintliness. 

I would watch Lucy. She was an interesting study. 
Her manner of speaking, her giggle, her childish little af- 
fectations seemed to grow more American every day. She 
was like a little foreigner in the house. 

Dora was watching and stud5dng her with a feeling akin 
to despair, I thought. It was as though she was pursuing 
the little girl, with outstretched arms, vainly trying to 
overtake her. 


CHAPTER XVI 


I WAS rapidly advancing on the road to financial triumphs. 

I was planning to move my business to larger quarters, 
in the same modest neighborhood. Mrs. Chaikin, my 
partner’s wife, failed to realize the situation, however. 
She could not forgive me the false representations I had 
made to her regarding my assets. 

“And where is the treasure you were expecting?” she 
would twit me. “You never tell a lie, do you? You 
simply don’t know how to do it. Poor thing!” 

"V^en we were in the midst of an avalanche of lucrative 
orders promising a brilliant winter season she took it into 
her head to withdraw her husband from the firm, in which 
he was a silent partner. Her decision was apparently 
based on the extreme efforts she had once seen me making 
to raise five hundred dollars. As a matter of fact, this was 
due to the rapidity of our growth. I lacked capital. But 
then my credit was growing, too, and altogether things 
were in a most encouraging condition. 

“What is the use worrying along like that?” she said. 
“You deceived me from the start. You made me believe 
you had a lot of money, while you were really a beggar. 
Yes, you are a beggar, and a beggar you are bound to stay. 
A beggar and a swindler — that’s what you are. You have 
fooled me long enough. You can’t fool me any longer. 
So there!” 

Her husband was still employed by the German firm, 
attending to the needs of our growing little factory sur- 
reptitiously every evening and on Sundays. The day 
seemed near when it would pay him to give all his time to 
our shop. And he was aware of it, too ; to some extent, at 
least. But Mrs. Chaikin ordained otherwise. 

I attempted to present the actual state of affairs to her, 
but broke off in the middle of a sentence. It suddenly 

289 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 


flashed upon my mind that it might all be to my advantage. 
“A designer can be hired,” I said to myself. “The busi- 
ness is progressing rapidly. To make him my life partner 
is too high a price to pay for his skill. Besides, having 
him for a partner actually means having his nuisance of a 
wife for a partner. It will be a good thing to get rid of her. 

I consulted Max, as I did quite often now. Not that 
I thought myself in need of his advice, or anybody else’s, 
for that matter. Success had made me too self-confident 
for that. I played the intimate and ardent friend, and this 
was simply part of my personation. To flatter his vanity 
I would make him think his suggestions had been acted 
upon and that they had brought good results. As a con- 
sequence, he was developing the notion that my success 
was largely due to his guidance, a notion which jarred on 
me, but which I humored, nevertheless. 

“Do you know what’s the matter?” he said, sagely. 
“Mrs. Chaikin must have found another partner for her 
husband. Some fellow with big money, I suppose.” 

“You are right, Max,” I said, sincerely. “How stupid 
I am.” 

“Why, of course they have got another partner. Of 
course they have,” he repeated, with elation. “So much 
the better for you. Let them go to the eighty black 
years. Don’t run after him. Just do as I tell you and 
you’ll be all right, Levinsky. My advice has never got 
you in trouble, has it?” 

“Indeed not. Indeed not,” I answered. 

Max’s blindness to what was going on between Dora 
and myself was a riddle to which I vainly sought a solution. 
That this cynic who charged every man and woman with 
immorality should, in the circumstances, be so absolutely 
undisturbed in his confidence regarding his wife seemed 
nothing short of a miracle. When I now think of the riddle 
I see its solution in a modified version of the old rule con- 
cerning the mote in thy neighbor’s eye and the beam in 
thine own eye. Your worst pessimist is, after all, an 
optimist with regard to himself. We are quick to recognize 
the gravity of ill health in somebody else, yet we ourselves 
may be on the very brink of death without realizing it. It 
is a special phase of selfishness. We are loath to connect 

290 


DORA 


the idea of a catastrophe with our own person. Max, who 
saw a mote in the eye of everybody else’s wife, failed to 
perceive the beam in the eye of his own. 

^ As for Sadie, who lived in the same house now, and who 
visited Dora’s apartment at all hours, she was too silly 
and too deeply infatuated with her friend to suspect her 
of anything wrong. 

I idolized Dora. It seemed to me that I adored her 
^ul even more than I did her body. I was under her moral 
n^uence, and the firmness with which she maintained the 
distance between us added to my respect for her. And 
yet I never ceased to dream of and to seek her moral 
downfall. 

I had extended my canvassing activities to a number of 
cities outside New York, my territory being a semicircle 
with a radius of about a hundred and fifty miles. I had 
long since picked up some of the business jargon of the 
country and I was thirstily drinking in more and more. 

“What do you think of this number, Mr. So-and-so?’’ 
I would say, self-consciously, to a merchant, as I dangled a 
garment in front of him. “You can make a run on it. It’s 
the kind of suit that gives the wearer an air of distinction.’’ 

If I heard a bit of business rhetoric that I thought ef- 
fective I would jot it down and commit it to memory. In 
like manner I would write down every new piece of slang, 
the use of the latest popular phrase being, as I thought, 
helpful in making oneself popular with Americans, es- 
pecially with those of the young generation. But somehow 
a slang phrase would be in general use for a considerable 
time before it attracted my attention. The Americans I 
met were so quick to discern and adopt these phrases it 
seemed as if they were bom with a special slang sense which 
I, poor foreigner that I was, lacked. That I was not bom 
in America was something like a physical defect that 
asserted itself in many disagreeable ways — a physical defect 
which, alas! no surgeon in the world was capable of 
removing. 

Other things that I would enter in my note-book were 
names of dishes on the bills of fare of the better restaurants, 
with explanations of my own. I would describe the differ- 
ence between Roquefort cheese and Liederkranz cheese, 

291 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 

between consomm^ Celestine and consomm^ princesse;^ I 
would make a note of the composition of macaroni au gratin, 
the appearance and taste of potatoes Lyonnaise, of various 
salad-dressings. But I gradually picked up this informa- 
tion in a practical way and really had no need of my 
culinary notes. I had many occasions to eat in high- 
class restaurants and I was getting to feel quite at home in 
them. 

Max’s conjecture regarding Chaikin was borne out. 
The talented designer had given up his job at the Man- 
heimer Brothers’ and opened a cloak-and-suit house with 
a man who had made considerable money as a cloak sales- 
man, and as a landlord for a partner. When Max heard 
of it he was overjoyed. 

‘‘I tell you what, Levinsky,” he said, half in jest and 
half in earnest. ‘‘Let the two of us make a partnership 
of it. I could put some money into the business.” 

I reflected that when I approached him for a loan of four 
himdred dollars, on my first visit at his house, he had 
pleaded poverty. 

“I could do a good deal of hustling, too,” he added, 
gravely. “Between the two of us we should make a great 
success of it.” 

I gave him an evasive answer. I must have looked an- 
noyed, for he exclaimed: 

“Look at him! Look at him, Dora! Scared to death, 
isn’t he?” And to me: “Don’t be uneasy, old chap! 
I am not going to snatch your factory from you. But you 
are a big hog, all the same. I can tell you that. How will 
you manage all alone? Who will take care of yotu* business 
when you go traveling?” 

“Oh, I’ll manage it somehow,” I answered, making an 
effort to be pleasant. “Chaikin was scarcely ever in the 
shop, anyhow.” 


CHAPTER XVII 


1 TRAVELED quite often, sometimes staying away 
from New York for two or three days, but more fre- 
quently for only one day. On one occasion, however, I 
was detained on the road for five days in succession. It 
was the beginning of June, a little over a year since the 
Margolises moved into the Clinton Street flat with myself 
as their boarder. I was homesick. I missed Dora acutely. 
I loved her passionately, tenderly, devotedly. I now felt 
it with special force. Her face and figure loomed up a 
hundred times a day. 

“Dora dear! Bridie mine!" I would whisper, all but 
going to pieces with tenderness and yearning. 

One afternoon, after closing an unexpectedly large sale 
in a department store, I went to the jewelry department of 
the same firm and paid a himdred and twenty dollars for a 
bracelet. I knew that she would not be able to wear it, 
yet I was determined to make her accept it. 

“Let her keep it in some hiding-place," I thought. 
“Let her steal an occasional look at it. I don’t care what 
she does with it. I want her to know that I think of her, 
that I am crazy for her." 

It was Friday evening when I returned to New York, 
having been on the road since the preceding Monday morn- 
ing. I first went to my place of business and then to a 
restaurant for supper. I wotdd not make my appearance 
at the house until half past lo, when the coast was sure to 
be clear. With thrills of anticipation that verged on 
physical pain I was looking forward to the moment 
when I should close the bracelet about her slender white 
wrist. 

At the fixed minute I was at the door of the Clinton Street 
apartment. I ptilled the bell. I expected an excited rush, 

293 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 

a violent opening of the door, a tremulous: “My loved 
one! My loved one!” 

There was a peculiar disappointment in store for me. 
She received me icily, not letting me come near her. 

“Why, what’s the matter? What’s up?” 

“Nothing,” she muttered. 

When we reached the light of the Sabbath candles in 
the dining-room I noticed that she looked worn and 
haggard, 

“What has happened?” I asked, greatly perplexed. “I 
have something for you,” I said, prcxlucing the blue-velvet 
box containing the bracelet and opening it. “Here, my 
bride!” 

“How dare you call me ‘bride,’ you hypocrite?” she 
gasped. “Away with you, your present and all!” 

“Why? Why? What does it all mean?” I asked, be- 
tween mirth and perplexity. 

For an answer she merely continued: “You thought you 
could bribe me by this present of yours, did you? You 
can fool me no longer. I have found you out. You have 
fallen into your own trap. You have. How dare you buy 
me presents?” 

At this she tore the bracelet out of my hand and flung 
it into the little corridor. She was on the verge of a fit of 
hysterics. I fetched her a glass of water, but she dashed 
it out of my hand. Then, frightened and sobered by the 
crash, she first tiptoed to the bedroom to ascertain if Lucy 
was not awake and listening, and then went to the little 
corridor, picked up the bracelet and slipped it into my 
pocket. 

“If you have decided to get married, I can’t stop you, 
of course,” she began, in a ghastly undertone, as she 
crouched to gather up the fragments of the glass and to 
wipe the floor. 

“Decided to get married?” I interrupted her. “WLere 
on earth did you get that? What ‘trap’ are you talking 
about, Dora?” 

She made no answer. I continued to protest my inno- 
cence. Finally, when she had removed the broken glass, 
she said: 

“It’s no use pretending you don’t know anything about 
it. It won’t do you any good. You have been very foxy 
294 


DORA 


about it, but you made a break, and there you are! You 
think you are very clever. If you were you wouldn’t let 
your shadchev} know where you live — ” 

'' Shadchen! Oh, I see,” I said, with a hearty laugh. 
“Has he been here?” And I gave way to another guffaw. 

Shadchen was a conspiracy name for a man who would 
bring an employer together with cloak-makers who were 
willing to cheat the union. The one who performed these 
services for me was one of my own “hands.” He was 
thoroughly dishonest, but he possessed a gentle disposition 
and a certain gift of expression. This gave him power 
over his shopmates. He was their “shop chairman” and 
a member of their “price committee.” He was the only 
man in my employ who actually received the full union 
price. In addition to this, I paid him his broker’s com- 
mission for every new man he frunished me, and various 
sums as bribes pme and simple. 

I explained it all to Dora. The ardor with which I 
spoke and the details of my dealings with the shadchen 
must have made my explanation convincing, for she ac- 
cepted it at once. 

“You’re not fooling me, are you?” she asked, piteously, 
yet in a tone of immense relief. 

“Strike me dirnib if — ” 

“’S-sh! Don’t curse yourself,” she said, clapping her 
hand over my mouth. “I can’t bear to hear it. I believe 
you. If you knew what I have gone through 1” 

“Poor, poor child!” I said, kissing her soft white fingers 
tenderly. “Poor, poor baby! How could you think of 
such a thing! There is only one bride for me in all the 
world, and that is my own Dora darling.” 

Her face shone with a wan, beseeching kind of light. 

Again I drew forth the bracelet. 

“Foolish child!” I said, examining it. “Thank God, 
it isn’t damaged. Not a bit.” 

I took her by the hand, opened the bracelet, and closed it 
over her wrist. She instantly took it off again, with an 
instinctive side-glance at the door. Then, holding it up 
to the light admiringly, she said; 

“Oh! Oh! Must have cost a pile of money! Why did 


1 Marriage broker, match-maker. 

295 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 

you spend so much? I can’t wear it, an3rway. Better re- 
turn it.” 

“Never! It’s yours, my sweetheart. Do whatever you 
like with it. Put it away somewhere. If you wear it for 
one minute every week I shall be happy. If you only look 
at it once in a while I shall be happy.” 

“I am afraid to keep it. Somebody may come across it 
some day. Better return it, my loved one! I am happy 
as it is. It would make me nervous to have it in the 
house.” 

She made me take it back. 

“Thank God it wasn’t a real shadchen! I thought I was 
going to commit suicide,” she said. 

I seized her in my arms. She abandoned herself to a 
transport of gratitude and happiness in which her usual 
fortitude melted away. 

The next morning she had the appearance of one doomed 
to death. Her eyes avoided everybody, not only her 
husband and Lucy, but myself as well. She pleaded 
indisposition. 

Max left for the synagogue, as he always did on Saturday 
morning. I accompanied him out of the house, on my 
way to business. We parted at a comer where I was 
to wait for a street-car. Instead of boarding a car, how- 
ever, I returned home. I was burning to be alone with 
Dora, to cuddle her out of her forlorn mood. 

“ I have come back for a minute just to tell you how dear 
you are to me,” I whispered to her in the presence of the 
children, who were having their breakfast. I signed to her 
to follow me into the parlor, and she did. “Just one kiss, 
dearest!” I said, clasping her to me and kissing her. “I’d 
let myself be cut to pieces for you.” 

She nestled to me for a moment, gave me a hasty kiss, and 
ran back to the children, all without looking at me. 

I went away with a broken heart. 

Late that evening, when we found oruselves alone, and I 
rushed at her, she gently pushed me off. 

“Why? What’s the trouble?” I asked. 

“No trouble at all,” she answered, looking down, with 
shamefaced gravity. 

“ Do you hate me ?” 


296 


DORA 

“Hate you! I wish I could,” she answered, with a sad 
smile, still looking down. 

“Why this new way, then?” I said, rather impatiently. 

“You are dearer than ever to me, Levinsky. Tell me to 
jump into fire, and I will. But — can’t we love each other 
and be good?” 

“What are you talking about, Dora? What has got into 
you? Do you know what you are to me now?” I de- 
manded, melodramatically. 

I made another attempt at kissing her, but was repulsed 
again. 

“Not now, anyway, my loved one,” she said, entreat- 
ingly. “ Let a few days pass. You don’t want me to feel 
bad, do you, dearest?” 

I looked sheepish. I was convinced that it was merely a 
passing mood. 


20 


CHAPTER XVIII 


N ext Monday, when I was ready to go to my place of 
business, Dora left the house, pitcher in hand, before 
I rose from the breakfast-table. She was going for milk, 
b)ut a side-glance which she cast at the floor in my direc- 
tion as she turned to shut the door behind her told me 
that she wanted to see me in the street. After letting some 
minutes pass I put on my overcoat and hat, bade Max a 
studiously casual good-by, and departed. 

I awaited her on the stoop. Presently she emerged from 
the grocery in the adjoining building. 

“Could you be free at 4 o’clock this afternoon?” she 
asked, ascending the few steps, and pausing by my side. 
“ I want to have a talk with you. Somewhere else. Not at 
home.” 

“Why not at home, in the evening?” 

“No. That won’t do,” she overruled me, softly. 
“Somebody might come in and interrupt me. I’ll wait for 
you in the little park on Second Avenue and Fifteenth 
Street. You know the place, don’t you?” 

She meant Stuyvesant Park, which the simny Second 
Avenue cuts in two, and she explained that our meeting 
was to take place on the west side of the thoroughfare. 
“Will you come?” she asked, nervously. 

“I will, I will. But what’s up? Why do you look so 
serious? Dora! Dora mine!” 

“’S-sh! You had better go. When we meet I’ll explain 
everything. At 4 o’clock, then. Don’t forget. As you 
come up the avenue, going up-town, it is on the left-hand 
side. Write it down.” 

To insure against any mistakes on my part she made me 
repeat it and then jot it down. As she turned to go up- 
stairs she said, in a melancholy whisper: 

“ Good-by, dearest.” 


298 


DORA 


When I reached the appointed place the brass hands of 
the clock on the steeple high overhead indicated ten 
minutes of 4. It was Jtme, but the day was a typical 
November day, mildly warm, clear, and charged with the 
exhilarating breath of a New York autumn. Dora had not 
yet arrived. The benches in the little park were for the 
most part occupied by housewives or servant-girls who sat 
gossiping in front of baby-carriages, amid the noise of 
romping children. Here and there an elderly man sat 
smoking his pipe broodingly. They were mostly Germans 
or Czechs. There were scarcely any of our people in the 
neighborhood at the period in question, and that was why 
Dora had selected the place. 

I stood outside the iron gate, gazing down the avenue. 
The minutes were insupportably long. 

At last her womanly figure came into dim view. My 
heart leaped. I was in a flutter of mixed anxiety and 
joyous anticipation. “Oh, she’ll back down,” I persuaded 
myself. 

She was walking fast, apparently under the impression 
that she was late. Her face was growing more distinct 
every moment. The blue hat she wore and the parasol 
she carried gave her a new aspect. I had more than once 
seen her leave the house in street array, but watching her 
come up the street thus formally attired somehow gave 
her a different appearance. 

She looked so peculiarly dignified and so exquisitely lady- 
like she almost seemed to be a stranger. This, added to 
her romantic estrangement from me and to the clandestine 
nature of our tryst, produced a singular effect upon me. 

“Am I very late?” she asked. 

“No. Not at all, Dora!” I said, yearningly. 

She made no answer. 

We could not find an empty bench, and to let Germans 
overhear our Yiddish, which is merely a German dialect, 
would have been rather risky. So she delivered her mes- 
sage as we walked roimd and round, both of us eying the 
asphalt all the while. Her beautiful complexion and our 
manner attracted much attention. The people on the 
benches apparently divined the romantic nature of our 
interview. One white-haired little man with a terrier 
face never took his eyes off her. 

299 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 


“First of all I want to tell you that this is one of the 
most important days in my life/’ she began. “It is cer- 
tainly not a happy day. It’s Yom Kippur^ with me. I 
want to say right here that I am willing to die for you, 
L^insky. I am terribly in love with you, Levinsky. 
Yes—’’ 

Her voice broke. She was confused and agitated, but 
she soon regained her self-mastery. She spoke in sad, 
solemn, quietly passionate tones, and gradually developed 
a homespun sort of eloquence which I had never heard 
from her before. But then the gift of homely rhetoric is 
rather a common talent among Yiddish-speaking women. 

The revolting sight of the dog-faced old fellow who was 
ogling Dora so fascinated me that it interfered with my 
listening. I made a point of looking away from him every 
time we came round to his bench, but that only kept me 
thinking of him instead of listening to Dora. Finally we 
confined our walk to the farther side of the little park, 
giving him a wide berth. 

“I love you more than I can tell you, Levinsky,” she 
resiuned. “But it is not my good luck to be happy. I 
dreamed all my life of love, and now that it is here, right 
here in my heart, I must choke it with my own hands.” 

“Why? Why?” I said, with vehemence. “Why must 
you?” 

“Why!” she echoed, bitterly. “Because the Upper One 
brought you to me only to pimish me, to tease me. That’s 
all. That’s all. That’s all.” 

“Why should you take it that way?” 

“Don’t interrupt me, Levinsky,” she said, chanting, 
rather than speaking. As she proceeded, her voice lapsed 
into a quaint, doleful singsong, not unlike the lament of 
om women over a grave. “ No, Levinsky. It is not given 
to me to be happy. But I ask no questions of the Upper 
One. I used to live in peace. I was not happy, but I lived 
in peace. I did not know what happiness was, so I did not 
miss it much. I only dreamed of it. But the Lord of the 
World would have me taste it, so that I might miss it and 
that my heart might be left with a big, big wound. I want 
you to know exactly how I feel. Oh, if I could ttu*n this 

1 Day of Atonement ; figuratively, a day of anguish and tears. 

300 


DORA 


poor heart of mine inside out! Then you could see all 
that is going on there. Listen, Levinsky. If it were not 
for my children, my dear children, my all in all in the world, 
I should not live with Margolis another day. If he gave 
me a divorce, well and good; if not, then I don’t laiow 
what I might do. I shouldn’t care. I love you so and 
I want to be happy. I do, I do, I do.” 

A sob rang through her voice as she repeated the words. 

“You do, and yet you are bound to make both of us 
miserable,” I said. 

“Can I help it?” 

‘ ‘ If you would you could, ’ ’ I said, grimly. ‘ ‘ Get a divorce 
and let us be married and have it over.” 

She shook her head sadly. 

“Thousands of couples get divorced.” 

She kept shaking her head. 

“Then what’s the use pretending you love me?” 

“Pretending! Shall I turn my heart inside out to show 
you how hard it is to live without you? But you can’t 
understand. No, Levinsky. I have no right to be happy. 
Lucy shall be happy. She certainly sha’n’t marry without 
love. Her happiness will be mine, too. That’s the only 
kind I am entitkd to. She shall go to college. She shall 
be educated. She shall marry the loved one of her heart. 
She shall not be buried alive as her mother was. Let her 
profit by what little sense I have been able to pick up.” 

A bench became vacant and we occupied it. The mo- 
mentary interruption and the change in her physical 
attitude broke the spell. The solemnity was gone out of 
her voice. She resumed in a distracted and somewhat 
listless manner, but she soon warmed up again. 

“What would you have me do? Let Lucy find out some 
day that her mother was a bad woman? I should take 
poison first.” 

“A bad woman!” I protested. “A better woman could 
not be found anywhere in the world. You are a saint, 
Dora.” 

“No, I am not. I am a bad, wicked, nasty woman. I 
hate myself.” 

“ ’S-sh! You mustn’t speak like that,” I said, stopping 
my ears. “ I cannot bear it.” 

“ Yes, that’s what I am, a nasty creature. I used to be 
301 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 

pure as gold. There was not a speck on my soul, and now, 
woe is me, pain is me! What has come over me?” 

■^en she finally got down to the practical side of her 
resolution it turned out that she wanted me to move out 
of her house and never to see her again. 

I was shocked. I flouted the idea of it. I argued, I 
poured out my lovelorn heart. But she insisted with an 
iron-clad finality. I argued again, entreated, raved, all to 
no ptupose. 

“I’ll never come dose to you. All I want is to be 
able to see you, to live in the same house with you.” 

“ Don’t be tearing my heart to pieces,” she said. “ It is 
tom badly enough as it is. Do as I say, Levinsky.” 

“Don’t you want to see me at all?” 

“Oh, it’s cmel of you to ask questions like that. You 
have no heart, Levinsky. It’s just because I am crazy 
to see you that you have got to move.” 

“Don’t you want me even to call at your house?” I 
asked, with an ironical smile, as though I did not take the 
matter seriously. 

“Well, that would look strange. Call sometimes, not 
often, though, and never when Margolis is out.” 

“Oh, I shall commit suicide,” I snarled. 

“Oh, well. It isn’t as bad as all that.” 

“I will. I certainly will,” I said, knowing that I was 
talking nonsense. 

“ Don’t torment me, Levinsky. Don’t sprinkle salt over 
my wound. Take pity on me. Do as I wish and let the 
tooth be pulled out with as little pain as possible.” 

I accompanied her down the avenue as far as Houston 
Street, where she insisted upon our parting. Before we 
did, however, she indulged in another outburst of funereal 
oratory, bewailing her happiness as she would a dead child. 
It was apparently not easy for her to take leave of me, but 
her purpose to make our romance a thing of the past and to 
have me move to other lodgings remained unshaken. 

“This is the last time I sh^ ever speak to you of my 
love, Levinsky,” she said. “ I must tear it out of my heart, 
even if I have to tear out a piece of my heart along with it. 
Such is my fate. Good-by, Levinsky. Good luck to you. 
Be good. Be good. Be good. Remember you have a 
good head. Waste no time. Study as much as you can. 

302 


DORA 


God grant you luck in your business, but try to find time 
for your books, too. You must become a great man. 
Do you promise me to read and study a lot?” 

“I do. I do. But I won’t move out. I can’t live 
without you. We belong to each other, and all you say is 
nothing but a woman’s whim. It’s aU bosh,” I concluded, 
with an air of masculine superiority. ” I won’t move out.” 

“You shall, dearest. Good-by. Good-by.” 

She broke into a fit of sobbing, but checked it, shook my 
hand vehemently and hastened away. 



CHAPTER XIX 


I HOPED she would yield, but she did not. I found 
myself in the grip of an iron will and I did as I was 
bidden. 

When I set out in quest of a ftimished room I instinc- 
tively betook myself to the neighborhood of Stuywesant 
Park. That park had acquired a melancholy fascination 
for me. As though to make amends for my agonies, I 
determined to move into a good, spacious room, even if I 
had to pay three or four times as much as I had been paying 
at the Margolises’. I found a sunny front room with two 
windows in an old brown-stone house on East Nineteenth 
Street, between Second Avenue and First, a short distance 
from the little park and near an Elevated station. The 
curtains, the carpet, the huge, soft arm-chair, and the 
lounge struck me as decidedly “aristocratic.” To cap the 
climax of comfort and “swellness,” the landlady — a gray 
little German-American — ^had, at my request, a bookcase 
placed between the mantelpiece and one of the windows. 
It was a “regular” bookcase, doors and all, not a mere 
“what-not,” and the sight of it swelled my breast. 

“I shall forget all my troubles here,” I thought. “I 
am going to buy a complete set of Spencer and some other 
books. Won’t the bookcase look fine! I shall read, read, 
read.” 

When I reported to Dora that I was ready to move, her 
face clouded. 

“You seem to be glad to,” she said, with venom, drop- 
ping her eyes. 

“Glad? Glad? Why, I am not going to move, then. 
May I stay here, darling mine? May I?” 

“Are you really sorry you have to move?” she asked, 
fixing a loving glance at me. “Do you really love me?” 

There were tears in her eyes. I attempted to come close 
to her, to kiss her, but she held me back. 

304 


DORA 


“No, dearest,” she said, shaking her head. “Move 
out to-morrow, will you? Let’s be done with it.” 

“And what will Max say?” I asked, sardonically. Will 
nothing seem strange to hm nothing at all?” 

“ Never mind that.” 

She never mentioned Max to me now, not even by pro- 
noun. 

“Then you must know him to be an idiot.” Now I 
hated Max with all my heart. 

“Don’t,” she implored. 

“Oh, I see. He’s dear to you now,” I laughed. 

“Have a heart, Levinsky. Have a heart. Must you 
keep shedding my blood? Have you no pity at all?” 

“But it is all so ridiculous. It will look strange,” I 
argued, seriously. “He is bound to get suspicious.” 

“I have thought it all out. Don’t be uneasy. I’U say 
we had a quarrel over your board bill.” 

“A nice dodge, indeed! It may fool Dannie, not him.” 

“ Leave it all to me. Better tell me what sort of lodgings 
you have got. Is it a decent room? Plenty of air and 
sunshine? But, no. Don’t tell me anything. I mustn’t 
know.” 

I sneered. 

She was absorbed in thought, flushed, nervous. 

Presently she said, with an effect of speaking to herself: 

“It’s sweet to suffer for what is right.” 

I moved out according to her program. I came home 
at lo the first evening. My double room, with its great 
arm-chair, carpets, bookcase, imposing lace curtains, and 
the genteel silence of the street outside, was a prison to me. 
I attempted to read, but there was a lump in my throat 
and the lines swam before me. 

I went out, roamed about the streets, dropped in at a 
Hungarian cafe, took another ramble, and returned to my 
room. 

I tossed about on my great double bed. I sat up in 
front of one of my two windows, gazing at a street-lamp. 
It was not solely Dora, but also Lucy and Dannie that I 
missed. Only the image of Max now aroused hostile 
feelings in me. 

Max called at my shop the very next day. The sight of 

305 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 

him cut me to the quick. I received him in morose 
silence. 

“What’s the matter? What’s the matter?” he inquired, 
with pained amazement. “What did you two quarrel 
about?” 

I made no answer. His presence oppressed me. My 
surly reticence was no mere acting. But I knew that he 
misinterpreted it into grim resentment of Dora’s sally, 
as though I said, “Your wife’s conduct had better be left 
undiscussed.” 

“What nonsense! She charged you too much, did she? 
Is that the way it all began? Did she insult you? Well, 
women-folk are liable to flare up, you know. Tell me all 
about it. I’ll straighten it out between you. The children 
miss you awfully. Come, don’t be a fool, Levinsky. Who 
ever took the words of a woman seriously? What did she 
say that you should take it so hard?” 

“You had better ask her,” I replied, with a well-acted 
frown. 

“Ask her! She gets wild when I do. I never saw her 
so wild. She thinks you insulted her first. Well, she is a 
woman, but you aren’t one, are you? Come to the house 
this evening, will you?” 

“That’s out of the question.” 

“Then meet me somewhere else. I want to have a talk 
with you. It’s all so foolish.” 

I pleaded important other engagements, but he insisted 
that I should meet him later in the evening, and I had to 
make the appointment. I promised to be at a Canal Street 
ca£6 on condition that he did not mention the disagreeable 
episode nor offer to effect a reconciliation between Dora 
and myself. 

“You’re a tough customer. As tough as Dora,” he 
said. 

When I came to the caf4, at about 1 1 , 1 found him waiting 
for me. He kept his promise about avoiding the subject 
of Dora, but he talked of women, which jarred on me 
inordinately now. His lecherous fibs and phfiosophy made 
him literally unbearable to me. To turn the conversation 
I talked shop, and this bored him. 

About a week later he called on me again. He informed 
me that Dora had taken a new apartment up in Harlem, 
306 


DORA 

where the rooms were even more modem and cheaper than 
on Clinton Street. 

“I wouldn’t mind staying where we are,” he observed. 
“But you know how women are. Everybody is moving 
up-town, so she must move, too.” 

My face hardened, as if to say: “Why will you speak 
of your wife? You know I can’t bear to hear of her.” 
At the same time I said to myself: “ Poor Dora! She must 
have fotmd it awful to live in the old place, now that I am 
no longer there.” 

His next visit at my shop took place after a lapse of 
three or four weeks. He descanted upon his new home 
and the Harlem dwellings in general, and I made an effort 
to show him cordial attention and to bear myself generally 
as though there were no cause for estrangement between 
us, but I failed. 

At last he said, resentfully: “What’s the matter with 
you? Why are you so sour? If you and Dora have had a 
falling out, is that any reason why you and I should not be 
good friends?” 

“Why, why?” I protested. “Who says I am sour?” 

We parted on very friendly terms. But it was a long 
time before I saw him again, and then under circumstances 
that were a disagreeable surprise to me. 


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1 4 


CHAPTER I 


EEKS went by. My desolation seemed to be 



yv growing in excruciating intensity. From time to 
time, when I chanced to recall some trait or trick of Dora’s, 
her person would come back to me with special vividness, 
smiting me with sudden cruelty. The very odor of her 
flesh would grip my consciousness. At such moments my 
agony would be so great that I seemed to be on the brink 
of a physical collapse. During intervals there was a 
steady gnawing pain. It was as though the unrelenting 
tortures of a dull toothache had settled somewhere in the 
region of my heart or stomach, I knew not exactly where. 
I recognized the pang as an old acquaintance. It had the 
same flavor as tl: e terrors of my tantalizing love for Matilda. 

My shop had lost all meaning to me. I vaguely longed 
to flee from myself. 

There was plenty to do in the shop and all sorts of outside 
appointments to feep, not to speak of my brief trips as 
traveling salesman. To all of which I attended with 
automatic regularity, with listless doggedness. The union 
was a constant source of worry. In addition, there was a 
hitch in my relations with the “marriage broker.” But 
even my worrying seemed to be done automatically. 

Having forfeited the invaluable services of Chaikin, 
who now gave all his time to his newly established factory, 
I filled the gap with all sorts of makeshifts and contrivances. 
An employee of one of the big shops, a tailor, stole designs 
for me. These were used in my shop by a psalm-muttering 
old tailor with a greenish-white beard full of snuff, who 
would have become a Chaikin if he had been twenty years 
yoimger. Later I hired the services of a newly graduated 
cloak-designer who would drop in of an afternoon. Offi- 
cially the old man was my foreman, but in reality he acted 
as a guiding spirit to that designer and one of my sample- 
makers, as well as foreman. 


311 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 


I was forming new connections, obtaining orders from new 
sources. Things were coming my way in spite of myself, 
as it were. There was so much work and bustle that it 
became next to impossible to manage it all single-handed. 
The need of a bookkeeper, at least, was felt more keenly 
every day. But I simply lacked the initiative to get one. 

While I was thus cudgeling my brains, hovering about 
my shop, meeting people, signing checks, reading or writing 
letters, that dull pain would keep nibbling, nibbling, nibbling 
at me. At times, during some of those violent onslaughts 
I would seek the partial privacy of my second-hand desk 
for the express purpose of abandoning myself to the tor- 
tures of my helpless love. There is pleasure in this kind of 
pain. It was as though I were two men at once, one being 
in the toils of hopeless love and the other filled with the joy 
of loving, all injunctions and barriers notwithstanding. 

' One October evening as I passed through the Grand 
Central station on my way from an Albany train I was 
hailed with an impulsive, “Hello, Levinsky!” 

It was Bender, my old-time evening-school instructor. 
I had not seen him for more than three years, during which 
time he had developed a pronounced tendency to baldness, 
though his apple face had lost none of its roseate freshness. 
He looked spruce as ever, his clothes spick and span, his 
“four-in-hand” tastefully tied, his collar and cuffs im- 
maculate. His hazel eyes, however, had a worn and 
wistful look in them. 

“Quite an American, I declare,” he exclaimed, with 
patronizing admiration and pride, as who should say, “ My 
work has borne fruit, hasn’t it?” 

“Well, how is the world treating you?” he questioned me, 
after having looked me over more carefully. “You seem 
to be doing well.” 

When he heard that I was “trying to manufacture cloaks 
and suits” he surveyed me once again, with novel interest. 

“Are you really? That’s good. Glad to hear you’re 
getting on in the world.” 

“Do you remember the two books you gave me — 
Dombey and Son and the little dictionary?” 

I told him how much good they had done me and he 
complimented me on my English. 

312 


ON THE ROAD 


He wanted to know more about my business, and I 
sketched for him my struggles during the first year and 
the progress I was now making. My narrative was in- 
terspersed with such phrases as, “my growing credit,’" 
“rny check, ’’ “in my desk,’’ “dinner with a buyer from 
Ohio,’’ all of which I uttered with great self-consciousness. 
He congratulated me upon my success and upon my 
English again. Whereupon I exuberantly acknowledged 
the gratitude I owed him for the special pains he had taken 
with me when I was his pupil. 

He still taught evening school dtiring the winter months. 
When I asked about his work at the custom-house, which 
had been his chief occupation three years before, he an- 
swered evasively. By little and little, however, he threw 
off his reserve and told, at first with studied flippancy and 
then with frank bitterness, how “the new Republican 
broom swept clean,’’ and how he had lost his job because 
of his loyalty to the Democratic party. He dwelt on the 
civil-service reform of President Cleveland, charging the 
Republicans with “offensive partisanship,’’ a Cleveland 
phrase then as new as fotu-in-hand neckties. And in the 
next breath he proceeded to describe certain injustices (of 
which he apparently considered himself a victim) within 
the fold of his own party. His immediate ambition was 
to obtain a “permanent appointment’’ as teacher of a 
public day school. 

He was a singular surprise to me. Formerly I had looked 
up to him as infinitely my superior, whereas now he struck 
me as being piteously beneath me. 

“Can’t you think of something better?” I said, with 
mild contempt. Then, with a sudden inspiration, I 
exclaimed: “I have a scheme for you, Mr. Bender! Sup- 
pose you try to sell cloaks? There’s lots of money in it.” 

The outcome of our conversation was that he agreed to 
spend a week or two in my shop preparatory to soliciting 
orders for me, at first in the city and then on the road. 

Our interview lasted a little over an hour, but that hour 
produced a world of difference in our relations. He had 
met me with a patronizing, “Hello, Levinsky.” When we 
parted there was a note of gratitude and of something like 
obsequiousness in his voice. 


21 


CHAPTER II 


O N a Friday afternoon, during the first week of Bender’s 
connection with my establishment, as he and I were 
crossing a side-street on our way from luncheon, I ran into 
the loosely built, bulky figure of Max Margolis. Max and 
I paused with a start, both embarrassed. I greeted him 
complaisantly. 

“And how are you?” he said, looking at the lower part 
of my face. 

I introduced my companion and after a brief exchange of 
trivialities we were about to part, when Max detained me. 

“Wait. What’s your hurry?’’ he said. “There is some- 
thing I want to speak to you about. In fact, it was to your 
shop I was going.’’ 

His manner disturbed me. “Were you? Come on, 
then,’’ I said. 

“Hold on. What’s your hurry? We might as well talk 
here.” 

Bender tipped his hat to him and moved away, leaving 
us to ourselves. 

“What is it?” I repeated, with studied indifference. 
“Well, I should like to have a plain, frank talk with you, 
Levinsky,” he answered. “There is something that is 
bothering my mind. I never thought I shotdd speak to 
you about it, but at last I decided to see you and have it out. 
I was going to call on you and to ask you to go out with 
me, because you have no private office.” 

There was a nervous, under-dog kind of air about him. 
His damp lips revolted me. 

“But what is it? What are all these preliminaries for? 
Come to the point and be done with it. What is it?” 
Then I asked, with well-simulated indignation, “Your 
wife has not persuaded you that I have cheated her out of 
some money, has she?” 


314 


ON THE ROAD 


Why, no. Not at all, ’ ’ he answered, looking at the pave- 
ment. “ It isn’t that at all. The thing is driving me mad.” 

“But what is it?” I shouted, in a rage. 

“’S-sh!" he said, nervously. “If you are going to be 
excited like that it’s no use speaking at all. Perhaps you 
are doing it on purpose to get out of it.” 

“Get out of what? What on earth are you prating 
about?” I demanded, with a fine display of perplexity and 
sarcasm. 

We were attracting attention. Bystanders were eying 
us. An old woman, leading a boy by the hand, even paused 
to watch us, and then her example was followed by some 
others. 

“Come on, for God’s sake!” he implored me. “All I 
want is a friendly talk with you. We might talk in your 
shop, but you have no private office.” 

“Whether I have one or not is none of your business,” I 
retorted, with irrelevant resentment. 

We walked on. He proposed to take me to one of the 
ball and meeting-room places in which he did business, and 
I acquiesced. 

A few minutes later we were seated on a long cushion 
of red plush covering one of the benches in a long, narrow 
meeting-hall. We were close to the window, in the full 
glare of daylight. A few feet off the room was in semi- 
darkness which, still farther off, lapsed into night. As the 
plush cushions stretched their lengths into the deepening 
gloom their live red died away. There was a touch of 
weirdness to the scene, adding to the oppressiveness of the 
interview. 

“I want to ask you a plain question,” he began, in a 
strange voice. “And I want you to answer it frankly. 
I assure you I sha’n’t be angry. On the contrary, I shall 
be much obliged to you if you tell me the whole truth. 
Tell me what happened between you and Dora.” 

I was about to burst into laughter, but I felt that it 
would not do. Before I knew how to act he added, with 
a sort of solemnity: 

“She has confessed everything.” 

“Confessed everything!” I exclaimed, with a feigned 
compound of hauteur, indignation, and amusement, play- 
ing for time. 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 


“That’s what she did.” 

A frenzy of hate took hold of me. I panted to be away 
from him, to be out of this room, semi-darkness, red 
cushions, and all, and let the future take care of itself. 
And so, jumping to my feet, I said, in a fury: 

“You always were a liar and an idiot. I don’t want 
to have anything to do with you.” With which I made for 
the door. 

“Oh, don’t be excited. Don’t go yet, Levinsky dear, 
please,” he implored, hysterically, nmning after me. “I 
have the best of feelings for you. May the things that I 
wish you come to me. levinsky! Dear friend! Darling!” 

“What do you want of me?” I demanded, with quiet 
rancor, pausing at the door and half opening it, without 
moving on. 

“If you tell me it isn’t true I’ll believe you, even if she 
did confess. I don’t know if she meant what she said. 
If only you were not excited! I want to tell you every- 
thing, everything.” 

I laughed sardonically. My desire to escape the ordeal 
gave way to strange curiosity. He seemed to be aware of 
it, for he boldly shut the door. He begged me to take a 
seat again, and I did, a short distance from the door, 
where the gloom was almost thick enough to hide our faces 
from each other’s view. 

“Why, you are simply crazy. Max!” I said. “You 
probably bothered the life out of her and she ‘confessed’ 
to put an end to it all. You might as well have made her 
confess to murder.” 

“That’s what she says now. But I don’t know. When 
she confessed she confessed. I could see it was the truth.” 

“You are crazy. Max! It is all nonsense. Ab-so- 
lutely.” 

“Is it?” he demanded, straining to make out the ex- 
pression of my face through the dusk. “Do assure me it 
is all untrue. Take pity, dear friend. Do take pity.” 

“How can I assure you, seeing that you have taken that 
crazy notion into your head and don’t seem to be able to 
get rid of it? Come, throw that stuff out of your mind!” 
I scolded him, mentorially. “It’s enough to make one 
sick. Come to reason. Don’t be a fool. I am no saint, 
of course, but in this case you are absolutely mistaken. 

316 


ON THE ROAD 


Why, Dora is such an absolutely respectable woman, a 
fellow would never dare have the lightest Idnd of fun with 
her. The idea!” — ^with a little laugh. “You are a baby, 
Max. Upon my word, you are. Dora and I had some 
words over my bill and — well, she insulted me and I wouldn’t 
take it from her. That’s all there was to it. Why, look 
here. Max. With your knowledge of men and women, do 
you mean to say that something was going on imder your 
very nose and you never noticed anything? Don’t you 
see how ridiculous it is?” 

“Well, I believe you, Levinsky,” he said, lukewarmly. 
“Now that you assure me you don’t know anything about 
it, I beheve you. I know you are not an enemy of mine. I 
have always considered you a true friend. You know I 
have. That’s why I am having this talk with you. I am 
feeling better already. But you have no idea what I have 
been through the last few weeks. She is so dear to me. I 
love her so.” His voice broke. 

I was seized with a feeling of mixed abomination and 
S3mipathy. 

“You are a child,” I said, taking him by the hand. As 
I did so every vestige of hostility faded out of me. My 
heart went out to him. “Come, Max, pull yourself to- 
gether! Be a man!” 

“I have always known you to be my friend. I believe 
all you say. I first began to think of this trouble a few 
days after you moved out. But at first I made no fuss 
about it. I thought she was not well. I came to see you 
a few times and you did not behave like a fellow who was 
guilty.” 

I gave a silent little laugh. 

He related certain intimate incidents which had aroused 
his first twinge of suspicion. He was revoltingly frank. 

“I spoke to her plainly,” he said. ‘“What’s the matter 
with you, Dora?’ I asked her. ‘Don’t you like me any 
more?’ And she got wild and said she hated me like 
poison. She never talked to me like that before. It was 
a different Dora. She was always downhearted, cranky. 
The slightest thing made her yeU or ciy with tears. It got 
worse and worse. Oh, it was terrible! We quarreled 
twenty times a day and the children cried and I thought 
I was going mad. Maybe she was just missing you. You 

317 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 

were like one of the family, don’t you know. And, well, 
you are a good-looking fellow, Levinsky, and she is only 
a woman.” 

“Nonsense!” I returned, the hot color mounting to my 
cheeks. “I am sure Dora had not a bad thought in her 
mind—” 

“But she confessed,” he interrupted me. “She said she 
was crazy for you and I could do as I pleased.” 

“But you know she did not mean it. She said it just 
for spite, just to make you feel bad, because you were 
quarreling with her.” 

He quoted a brutal question which he had once put to her 
concerning her relations with me, and then he quoted Dora 
as answering: 

“Yes, yes, yes! And if you don’t like it you can sue me 
for divorce.” 

I laughed, making my merriment as realistic as I could. 

“It’s aU ridiculous nonsense. Max,” I said. “You made 
life miserable to her and she was ready to say anything. 
She may have been worried over something, and you imag- 
ined aU sorts of things. Maybe it was something about her 
education that worried her. You know how ambitious she 
is to be educated, and how hard she takes these things.” 

Max shook his head pensively. 

“ I am sure it is as I say,” I continued. “ Dora is a pecul- 
iar woman. The trouble is, you judge her as if she were like 
the other women you meet. Hers is a different character.” 

This point apparently interested him. 

“She is always taken up with her thoughts,” I pursued. 
“She is not so easy to understand, anyway. I lived over 
a year in your house, and yet I’ll be hanged if I know what 
kind of woman she is. Of course you’re her husband, but 
still — can you say you know what she is thinking of most 
of the time?” 

“There is something in what you say,” he assented, half- 
heartedly. 

As we rose to go he said, timidly: “There is only one 
more question I want to ask of you, Levinsky. You won’t 
be angry, will you?” 

“Y^at is it?” I demanded, with a good-natured laugh. 
‘ ‘ What is bothering your head ?” 

“I mean if you meet her now, sometimes?” 

318 


ON THE ROAD 


“Now, look here, Max. You are simply crazy,” I said, 
earnestly. “I swear to you by my mother that I have 
not seen Dora since I moved out of your house, and that 
all your suspicions are nonsense” (to keep the memory of 
my mother from desecration I declared mutely that my 
oath referred to the truthful part of my declaration only — 
that is, exclusively to the fact that I no longer met Dora). 

“I believe you, I believe you, Levinsky,” he rejoined. 

We parted more than cordially. Max promising to call 
on me again and to spend an evening with me. 

I was left in a singular state of mind. I was eaten up 
with comptmction, and yet the pain of my love reasserted 
itself with the tantalizing force of two months before. 

Max never called on me again. 


CHAPTER III 


5 a salesman Bender proved a dismal failure, but I 



retained him in my employ as a bookkeeper and a sort 
of general supervisor. I could offer him only ten dollars 
a week, with a promise to raise his salary as soon as I 
could afford it, and he accepted the job “temporarily.” 
As general super\dsor under my orders he developed con- 
siderable efficiency, although he lacked initiative and his 
naivete was a frequent cause of annoyance to me. I found 
him spotlessly honest and devoted. 

I quickly raised his salary to fifteen dollars a week. 

He was the embodiment of method and precision and 
he often nagged me for my deficiency in these qualities. 
Sometimes these naggings of his or some display of poor 
judgment on his part would give rise to a tiff between us. 
Otherwise we got along splendidly. We were supposed to 
be great chums. In reality, however, I would freely order 
him about, while he would address me with a fanuliarity 
which had an echo of respectfiil distance to it. 

With him to take care of my place when I was away, it 
became possible for me gradually to extend my territory 
as traveling salesman till it reached Nebraska and Lomsiana. 
Thus, having failed as a drummer himself, he made up for 
it by enabling me to act as one. 

He had been less than a year with me when his salary 
was twenty dollars. 

Charles Eaton, the Pennsylvanian of the hemispherical 
forehead and bushy eyebrows who had given me my first 
lesson in restaurant manners, was now my sponsor at the 
beginning of my career as a full-fledged traveling salesman. 
He took a warm interest in me. Having spent many years 
on the road himself, more particularly in the Middle West 
and Canada, he had formed many a close friendship among 


320 


ON THE ROAD 


retailers, so he now gave me some valuable letters of intro- 
duction to merchants in several cities. 

When I asked him for suggestions to guide me on the 
road he looked perplexed. 

“Oh, well, I guess you’ll do well,” he said. 

“Still, you have had so much experience, Mr. Eaton.” 

“Well, I really don’t know. It’s all a matter of common 
sense, I guess. And, after all, the merchandise is the 
thing, the merchandise and the price.” 

He added a word or two about the futility of laying down 
rules, and that was all I could get out of him. That a 
man of few words like him should have succeeded as a 
salesman was a riddle to me. I subsequently realized that 
his reticence accentuated an effect of solidity and helped 
to inspire confidence in the few words which he did utter. 
But at the time in question I was sure that the “gift of the 
gab” was an indispensable element of success in a salesman. 

Indeed, one of my faults as a drummer, during that period 
at least, was that I was apt to talk too much. I would do 
so partly for the sheer lust of hearing myself use the jargon 
of the market, but chiefly, of course, from eagerness to 
make a sale, from over-insistence. I was too exuberant in 
praising my own goods and too harsh in criticising those of 
my competitors. Altogether there was more emphasis than 
dignity in my appeal. 

One day, as I was haranguing the proprietor of a small 
department store in a Michigan town, he suddenly inter- 
rupted me by placing a friendly hand on my shoulder. 
His name was Henry Gans. He was a stout man of fifty, 
with the stamp of American birth on a strong Jewish face. 

“Let me give you a bit of advice, young man,” he said, 
with paternal geniality. “You won’t mind, will you?” 

I uttered a perplexed, “Why, no”; and he proceeded: 

“If you want to make good as a salesman, observe these 
two rules: Don’t knock the other fellow and don’t talk too 
much.” 

For a minute I stood silent, utterly nonplussed. Then, 
pulling m3"self together, I said, with a bow: 

“Thank you, sir. Thank you very much. I am only 
a beginner, and only a few years in the country. I know 
I have still a great deal to learn. It’s very kind of you to 
point out my mistakes to me.” 

321 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 


The gay light of Gans’s eye gave way to a look of heart- 
to-heart earnestness. 

“It ain’t nice to run down your competitor,” he said. 
“Besides, it don’t pay. It makes a bad impression on the 
man you are trying to get an order from.” 

We had a long conversation, gradually passing from 
business to affairs of a personal nature. He was interested 
in my early struggles in America, in my mode of living, in 
the state of my business, and I told him the whole story. 
He seemed to be well disposed toward me, but it was 
evident that he did not take my “one-horse” establishment 
seriously, and I left his store without an order. I was 
berating myself for having revealed the true size of my 
business. Somehow my failme in this instance galled me 
with special poignancy. I roamed around the streets, 
casting about for some scheme to make good my mistake. 

Less than an hour after I left Gans’s store I re-entered 
it, full of fresh spirit and pluck. 

“I beg yoiu* pardon for troubling you again, Mr. Gans,” 
I began, stopping him in the middle of an aisle. “You’ve 
been so kind to me. I should like to ask you one more 
question. Only one. I trust I am not intruding?” 

“Go ahead,” he said, patiently. 

“ I shall do as you advise me. I shall never knock the 
other fellow,” I began, with a smile. “But suppose his 
merchandise is really good, and I can outbid him. Why 
should it not be proper for me to say so? If you’ll permit 
me” — pointing at one of the suits displayed in the store, 
a brown cheviot trimmed with velvet. “Take that suit, 
for instance. It’s certainly a fine garment. It has style 
and dash. It’s really a beautiful garment. I haven’t the 
least idea how much you pay for it, of course, but I do 
know that I could make you the identical coat for a much 
smaller price. So why shouldn’t it be right for me to say 
so?” 

He contemplated me for a moment, broke into a hearty 
laugh, and said: 

“You’re a pretty shrewd fellow. Why, of course, there’s 
nothing wrong in selling cheaper than your competitor. 
That’s what we’re all trying to do. That’s the game, pro- 
vided you really can seU cheaper than the other man, and 
there are no other drawbacks in doing business with you.” 

322 


ON THE ROAD 


What I said about the brown suit piqued him. He had 
his bookkeeper show me the bill, and defied me to sell him 
a garment of exactly the same material, cut, and workman- 
ship for less. I accepted the challenge, offering to reduce 
the price by four dollars and a half before I had any idea 
whether I could afford to do so. I was ready to lose money 
on the transaction, so long as I got a start with this man. 

Gans expressed doubt of my ability to make good my 
offer. I proceeded to explain the special conditions under 
which I ran my business. I waxed eloquent. 

“Doing business on a gigantic scale is not always an 
advantage, Mr. Gans,” I sang out, with an affected Yankee 
twang. “There are exceptions. And the cloak-and-suit 
industry is one of these exceptions, especially now that the 
Cloak-makers’ Union has come to stay. By dealing with a 
very big firm you’ve got to pay for union labor, while a 
modest fellow like myself has no trouble in getting cheap 
labor. And when I say cheap I don’t mean poor labor, 
but just the opposite. I mean the very best tailors, the 
most skilled mechanics in the country. It sounds queer, 
doesn’t it? But it’s a fact, nevertheless, Mr. Gans. It is 
a fact that the best ladies’ tailors are old-fashioned, pious 
people, green in the country, who hate to work in big 
places, and who keep away from Socialists, anarchists, 
unionists, and their whole crew. They need very little, 
and they love their work. They willingly stay in the shop 
from early in the morning till late at night.” 

“They are dead stuck on it, hey?” Gans said, quizzically. 

“They are used to it,” I explained. “ In Russia a tailor 
works about fomteen hours a day. Of course, I don’t let 
them overwork themselves. I treat them as if they were 
my brothers or uncles. We get along like a family, and 
they earn twice as much as the strict tmion people, too.” 

“I see. They get low wages and don’t work too much 
and are ahead of the game, after all. Is that it? WeU, 
well. But you’re a smart fellow, just the same.” 

I explained to him why my men earned more than they 
would in the big shops, and the upshot was an order for 
a hundred suits. Twenty of these were to be copies of the 
brown-cheviot garment which was the subject of his chal- 
lenge, I buying that suit of him, so as to use it as a sample. 

On my way home I exhibited that suit to merchants in 

323 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 


other cities, giving it out for my own product. It was 
really an attractive garment and it brought me half a 
dozen additional sales. 

I developed into an excellent salesman. If I were asked 
to name some single element of my success on the road I 
should mention the enthusiasm with which I usually spoke 
of my merchandise. It was genuine, and it was contagious. 
Retailers could not help believing that I believed in my 
goods. 


CHAPTER IV 


T he road was a great school of business and life to me. 

I visited scores of cities. I met hundreds of hiiman 
types. I saw much of the United States. Every time I 
returned home I felt as though, in comparison with the 
places which I had just visited, New York was not an 
American city at all, and as though my last trip had greatly 
added to the “real American” quality in me. 

Thousands of things reminded me of my promotion in 
the world. I could not go to bed in a Pullman car, walk 
over the spring “runner” of a hotel corridor, unfold the 
immense napkin of a hotel dining-room, or shake down 
my trousers upon alighting from a boot-black’s chair, 
without being conscious of the difference between my 
present life and my life in Antomir. 

I was full of energy, full of the joy of being alive, but 
there was usually an undercurrent of sadness to all this. 
While on the road I would feel homesick for New York, 
and at the same time I would feel that I had no home 
anywhere, that my mother was dead and I was all alone 
in the world. 

I missed Dora many months after she made me move from 
her house. As for Max, the thought of him, his jealousy 
and the way he groveled before me the last time I had 
seen him, would give me a bad taste in the mouth. I both 
pitied and despised him, and I hated my guilty conscience ; 
so I would try to keep him out of my mind. What I 
missed almost as much as I did Dora was her home. There 
was no other to take its place. There was not a single 
family in New York or in any other American town who 
would invite me to its nest and make me feel at home there. 
I saw a good deal of Meyer Nodelman, but he never asked 
me to the house. And so I was forever homesick, not for 
Antomir — for my native town had become a mere poem — 
but for a home. 


325 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 


I did some reading on the road. There was always some 
book in my hand-bag — some volume of Spencer, Emerson, 
or Schopenhauer (in an English translation), perhaps. 
I would also read articles in the magazines, not to mention 
the newspapers. But I would chiefly spend my time in the 
smoker, talking to the other drummers or listening to their 
talk. There was a good deal of card-playing in the cars, 
but that never had any attraction for me. I tried to 
learn poker, but fotmd it tedious. 

The cigarette stumps by which I had sought to counteract 
my hunger pangs at the period of my dire need had de- 
veloped the cigarette habit in me. This had subsequently 
become a cigar habit. I had discovered the psychological 
significance of smoking “the cigar of peace and good will.” 
I had realized the importance of offering a cigar to some of 
the people I met. I would watch American smokers and 
study their ways, as though there were a special American 
manner of smoking and such a thing as smoking with a 
foreign accent. I came to the conclusion that the dignity 
of smoking a cigar lasted only while the cigar was still 
long and fresh. There seemed to be special elegance in a 
smoker taking a newly lighted cigar out of his mouth and 
throwing a glance at its glowing end to see if it was smoking 
well. Accordingly, I never did so without being conscious 
of my gestures and trying to make them as “American” 
as possible. 

The other cloak salesmen I met on the road in those days 
were mostly representatives of much bigger houses than 
mine. They treated me with ill-concealed contempt, and 
I would retaliate by overstating my sales. One of the 
dnunmers who were fond of taunting me was an American 
by birth, a fellow named Loeb. 

“Well, Levinsky,” he would begin. “Had a big day, 
didn’t you?” 

“I certainly did,” I would retort. 

‘ ‘ How much ? Twenty-five thousand ?’ ’ 

“Well, it’s no use trying to be fimny, but I’ve pulled in 
five thousand dollars to-day.” 

“Is that all?” 

“Well, if you don’t believe me, what’s the use asking? 
What good would it do me to brag? If I say five 
thousand, it is five thousand. As a matter of fact, it ’ll 
326 


ON THE ROAD 

amount to more.” Whereupon he would slap his knee 
and roar. 

He was a good-looking, florid-faced man with sparkling 
black eyes — a gay, boisterous fellow, one of those who are 
the first to laugh at their own jests. He was connected 
with the largest house in the cloak trade. Our relations 
were of a singular character. He was incessantly poking 
fim at me; nothing seemed to afford him more pleasure 
than to set a smokerful of passengers laughing at my 
expense. At the same time he seemed to like me. But 
then he hated me, too. As for me, I reciprocated both 
feelings. 

One day, on the road, he made me the victim of a prac- 
tical joke that proved an expensive lesson to me. The 
incident took place in a hotel in Cincinnati, Ohio. He 
“confidentially” let me see one of his samples, hinting that 
it was his “leader,” or best seller. He then went to do 
some telephoning, leaving the garment with me the while. 
Whereupon I lost no time in making a pencil-sketch of it, 
with a few notes as to materials, tints, and other details. 
I subsequently had the garment copied and spent time 
and money offering it to merchants in New York and on the 
road. It proved an unmitigated failure. 

“You are a nice one, you are,” he said to me, with mock 
gravity, on a subsequent trip. “You copied that garment 
I showed you in Cincinnati, didn’t you?” 

“What garment? What on earth are you talking 
about?” I lied, my face on fire. 

“Come, come, Levinsky. You know very well what 
garment I mean. While I was away telephoning you went 
to work and made a sketch of it. It was downright robbery. 
That’s what I call it. Well, have you sold a lot of them?” 
And he gave me a merry wink that cut me as with a knife. 

One of the things about which he often made fun of 
me was my Talmud gesticulations, a habit that worried me 
like a physical defect. It was so distressingly im- American. 
I struggled hard against it. I had made efforts to speak 
with my hands in my pockets; I had devised other means 
for keeping them from participating in my speech. All of 
no avail. I still gesticulate a great deal, though much less 
than I used to. 

One afternoon, on a west-boimd train, Loeb entertained 

327 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 


a group of passengers of which I was one with worn-out 
stories of gesticulating Russian Jews. He told of a man 
who never opened his mouth when he was out of doors and 
it was too cold for him to expose his hands; of another man 
who never spoke when it was so dark that his hands could 
not be seen. I laughed with the others, but I felt like a 
cripple who is forced to make fun of his own deformity. 
It seemed to me as though Loeb, who was a Jew, was hold- 
ing up our whole race to the ridicule of Gentiles. I could 
have executed him as a traitor to his people. Presently 
he turned on me. 

“By the way, Levinsky, you never use a telephone, do 
you?” 

“Why? Who says I don’t?” I protested, timidly. 

“Because it’s of no use to you,” he replied. “The 
fellow at the other end of the wire couldn’t see your hands, 
could he?” And he broke into a peal of self-satisfied mirth 
in which some of his listeners involuntarily joined. 

“You think you’re awfully smart,” I retorted, in abject 
misery. 

“And you think you’re awfully grammatical.” And 
once more he roared. 

“You are making fun of the Jewish people,” I said, in a 
rage. “Aren’t you a Jew yourself?” 

“Of course I am,” he answered, wiping the tears from his 
laughing black eyes. “And a good one, too. I am a 
member of a synagogue. But what has that got to do with 
it? I can speak on the telephone, all right.” And again 
the car rang with his laughter. 

I was aching to hiu*! back some fitting repartee, but could 
think of none, and to my horror the moments were slipping 
by, and presently the conversation was changed. 

At the request of a gay little Chicagoan who wore a skull- 
cap a very fat Chicagoan told a story that was rather 
risque. Loeb went him one better. The man in the skull- 
cap declared that while he could not bring himself to tell 
a smutty story himself, he was “as good as any man in 
appreciating one.” He then offered a box of cigars for the 
most daring anecdote, and there ensued an orgy of ob- 
scenity that kept us shouting (I could not help thinking 
of similar talks at the cloak-shops). Loeb suggested that 
the smoking-room be dubbed “smutty room” and was ap- 

328 


ON THE ROAD 


plauded by the little .Chicagoan. The prize was awarded, 
by a vote,^ to a man who had told his story in the gravest 
tone of voice and without a hint of a smile. 

Frivolity gave way to a discussion of general business 
conditions. A lanky man with a gray beard, neatly 
trimmed, and with the most refined manners in otir group, 
said something about competition in the abstract. I made 
a remark which seemed to attract attention and then I 
hastened to refer to the struggle for life and the survival 
of the fittest. Loeb dared not burlesque me. I was in 
high feather. 

Dinner was announced. To keep my traveling expenses 
down I was usually very frugal on the road. I had not yet 
seen the inside of a dining-car (while stopping at a hotel I 
would not indulge in a dining-room meal unless I deemed 
it advisable to do so for business considerations). On this 
occasion, however, when most of our group went to the 
dining-car I could not help joining them. The lanky man, 
the little Chicagoan, and the fleshy Chicagoan — the three 
“stars” of the smoker — went to the same table, and I 
hastened, with their ready permission, to occupy the re- 
maining seat at that table. I ordered an expensive dinner. 
At my instance the chat turned on national politics, a sub- 
ject in which I felt at home, owing to my passion for news- 
paper editorials. I said something which met with an 
encouraging reception, and then I entered upon a some- 
what elaborate discourse. My listeners seemed to be in- 
terested. I was so absorbed in the topic and in the success 
1 was apparently scoring that I was utterly oblivious to the 
taste of the food in my mouth. But I was aware that it 
was “aristocratic American” food, that I was in the 
company of well-dressed American Gentiles, eating and 
conversing with them, a nobleman among noblemen. I 
throbbed with love for America. 

“Don’t be excited,” I was saying to myself. “Speak 
in a calm, low voice, as these Americans do. And for 
goodness’ sake don’t gesticulate!” 

I went' on to speak with exaggerated apathy, my hands 
so strenuously still that they fairly tingled with the effort, 
and, of course, I was so conscious of the whole performance 
that I did not know what I was talking about. This state 
of my mind soon wore off, however. 

22 329 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY^ 

Neither the meal nor the appointments of the car con- 
tained anything that I had not enjoyed scores of times be- 
fore — ^in the hotels at which I stopped or at the restaurants 
at which I would dine and wine some of my customers; 
but to eat such a meal amid such surroundings while on the 
move was a novel experience. The electric lights, the soft 
red glint of the mahogany walls, the whiteness of the table 
linen, the silent efficiency of the colored waiters, coupled 
with the fact that all this was speeding onward through 
the night, made me feel as though I were partaking of a 
repast in an enchanted palace. The easy urbanity of the 
three well-dressed Americans gave me a sense of imcanny 
gentility and bHss. 

“Can it be that I am I?’' I seemed to be wondering. 

The gaunt, elderly man, who was a member of a wholesale 
butcher concern, was seated diagonally across the table 
from me, but my eye was for the most part fixed on him 
rather than on the fat man who occupied the seat directly 
opposite mine. He was the most refined-looking man of 
the three and his vocabulary matched his appearance and 
manner. He fascinated me. His cultured English and 
ways conflicted in my mind with the character of hia 
business. I could not help thinking of raw beef, bones, 
and congealed blood. I said to myself, “ It takes a country 
-like America to produce butchers who look and speak like 
noblemen.” The United States was still full of surprises 
for me. I was still discovering America, 

After dinner, when we were in the smoking-room again, 
it seemed to me that the three Gentiles were tired of me. 
Had I talked too much? Had I made a nuisance of myself? 
J was wretched. 


CHAPTER V 


I LOST track of Loeb before the train reached Chicago^ 
but about a fortnight later, when I was in St. Louis, 
I encountered him again. It was on a Monday morning. 
With sample-case in hand, I was crossing one of the busiest 
spots in the shopping district with preoccupied mien, when 
he hailed me: 

‘‘Hello, Levinsky! How long have you been here?” 
“Just arrived,” I answered. 

“Where are you stopping?” 

I named my hotel. I could see that he was taking note 
of the fact that I was crossing the street to the Great 
Bazar, one of the largest department stores in St. Louis. 

“I am going to tacMe Himtington this morning,” I said, 
with mild defiance. 

“Are you? Wish you luck,” he remarked, quite gravely. 
“You’U find him a pretty tough customer, though.” He 
was apparently too busy to indulge in raillery. “Wish you 
luck,” he repeated, and was off. 

Himtington was the new head of the cloak-and-suit 
department in the Great Bazar, and in this capacity he 
was said to be doing wonders. It was not true that I had 
just arrived. I had been in the city nearly three days, and 
the day before I had mailed a letter to Huntington upon 
which I was building great hopes. I knew but too well 
that he was a “tough customer,” my previous efforts to 
obtain an interview with him — ^in New York as well as 
here, in St. Louis — Shaving proven futile. I was too small 
a fish for him. Nor, indeed, was the Great Bazar the 
only large department store in the country whose door was 
closed to me. Barring six or seven such stores, in as many 
cities, with which I was in touch largely through the good 
offices of Eaton, my business was almost confined to small 
concerns. Eaton had given me letters to many other 

331 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 


large firms, but these had brought no result. For one thing, 
my Russian name was against me. As I have said before, 
the American business world had not yet learned to take 
om people seriously. 

And so I had written Huntington, making a special 
plea for a few minutes of his “most valuable time.” All 
I asked for was an opportunity “to point out some specific 
conditions that enable om house to reduce the cost of pro- 
duction to an unheard-of level.” If he had only read that 
letter! I had bestowed so much effort on it, and I gave 
myself credit for having made a fine job of it. 

Arriving at the big store, I made my way to the sample- 
rooms. I did so by a freight-elevator, the passenger-cars 
being denied to men carrying sample-cases. In the waiting- 
room of the buyers’ offices I foimd four or five men, all of 
them accompanied by colored porters who carried their 
sample-cases for them. A neat-looking office-boy, behind 
a small desk, was rocking on the hind legs of his diair with 
an air of supreme indifference. 

“Will you take it in?” I said to him, handing him my 
card. “I want to see Mr. Huntington.” 

“Mr. Huntington is busy,” he answered, mechanically, 
without ceasing to rock. 

“Take it in, please,” I whispered, imploringly. But he 
took no heed of me. Had I been the only salesman in the 
room, I should have offered him a bribe. As it was, there 
was nothing to do but to take a seat and wait. 

“These office-boys treat salesmen like so many dogs,” 
I muttered, addressing myself to the man by my side. 

He sized me up, without deigning an answer. 

Other salesmen made their appearance, some modestly, 
others with a studied air of confidence, loudly greeting 
those they knew. The presence of so many rivis and the 
frigidity of the office-boy made my heart heavy. I was 
stni a novice at the game, and the least mark of hostility 
was apt to have a depressing effect on my spirits, though, 
as a rule, it only added fuel to my ambition. 

Some of the other salesmen were chatting and cracking 
jokes, for all the world like a group of devoted friendS 
gathered for some common purpose. The ostensible mean- 
ing of it all was that the competition in which they were 
engaged was a “mere matter of business,” of civilized 
332 


ON THE ROAD 

rivalry; that it was not supposed to interfere with their 
friendship and mutual sense of fair play. But I thought 
that all this was mere pretense, and that at the bottom of 
their hearts each of them felt like wiping the rest of us off 
the face of the earth. 

Presently the office-boy gathered up our cards and dis- 
appeared behind a door. He was gone quite a few minutes. 
They were hours to me. I was in the toils of suspense, in 
a fever of eagerness and anxiety. As I sat gazing at the 
door through which the office-boy had vanished, Mr. 
Huntington loomed in my imagination large and formi- 
dable, mighty and stem. To be admitted to his presence 
was at this moment the highest aim of my life. Running 
through my anxious mind were various phrases from the 
letter I had sent him. Some of these seemed to be highly 
felicitous. The epistle was boimd to make an impression. 
‘'Provided he has read it,” I thought, anxiously. “But 
why should he have bothered with it? He probably re- 
ceives scores Hke it. No, he has not read it.” 

The next moment it became clear to me that the opening 
sentence of my plea was sure to have arrested Himtington’s 
attention, that he had read it to the end, and would let 
me not only show him my samples, but explain matters as 
well. Of a sudden, however, it stmck me, to my horror, that 
I had no recollection of having signed that letter of mine. 

A middle-aged woman with a Jewish cast of features 
passed through the waiting-room. I knew that she was 
Himtington’s assistant and she was apparently going to his 
compartment of the sample-room. The fact that she had a 
Jewish face seemed encouraging. Not that the Jews I had 
met in business had shown me more leniency or cordiality 
than the average Gentile. Nor was an assistant buyer, as 
a rule, in a position to do something for a salesman unless 
his samples had been referred to her by her superior. 
Nevertheless, her Jewish features spoke oi kinship to me. 
They softened the grimness of the atmosphere around me. 

Finally the office-boy came back. My heart beat vio- 
lently. Pausing at his desk, with only two or three of all 
the cards he had taken to the potentate, he looked at them, 
as he called out, with great dignity: 

“Mr. Himtington will see Mr. Sallinger, Mr. Stewart, 
and Mr. Feltman.” 


333 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 

My heart sank. I suspected that my poor card had 
never reached its destination, that the boy had simply 
thrown it away, together with some of the other cards, 
perhaps, on his way to Mr. Huntington’s room. Indeed, I ' 
knew that this was the fate of many a salesman’s card. 

The boy called out Ballinger’s name again, this time 
admitting him to the inner precincts. AU those whose cards 
had been ignored except myself — there were about a dozen 
of them — ^picked up their sample-cases or had their porters 
do so and passed out without ado. As for me, I simply 
could not bring myself to leave. 

“He didn’t mark my card, did he?” I said to the boy. 

“No, sir,” he snapped, with a scowl. 

When I reached the street I paused for some minutes, 
as though glued to the sidewalk. Was it all over? Was 
there no hope of my seeing Himtington? My mind would 
not be reconciled to such an outcome. I stood racking my 
brains for some subterfuge by which I might be able to 
break through the Chinese wall that separated me from the 
great Mogul, and when I finally set out on my way to 
other stores I was still brooding over the question. I 
visited several smaller places that day and I made some 
sales, but aU the while I was displaying my samples, quoting 
prices, arguing, cajoling, explaining, jesting, the back- 
groimd of my brain never ceased bothering about Htmting- 
ton and devising means of getting at him. 

The next morning I was in Huntington’s waiting-room 
again. I fared no better than on the previous occasion. 

I tried to speak to Huntington on the telephone, but I 
only succeeded in speaking to a telephone-girl and she 
told me that he was busy. 

“Please tell Mr. Huntington I have a job to dose out, 
a seventeen-dollar garment for seven fifty.” 

“Mr. Himtington is busy.” 

At this moment it seemed to me that aU talk of American 
liberty was mere cant. 

I asked the manager of the hotel at which I was stopping 
to ^ve me a letter of introduction to him, and received a 
polite no for an answer. I discovered the restaurant where 
Himtington was in the habit of taking lunch and I went 
there for my next noon-hour meal for the purpose of asking 
him for an interview. I knew him by sight, for I had seen 
334 


ON THE ROAD 

him twice in New York, so when he walked into the restau- 
rant there was a catch at my heart. He was a spare little 
man with a face, mustache, and hair that looked as though 
he had just been dipped in a pail of saffron paint. He was 
accompanied by another man. I was determined first to 
let him have his lunch and then, on his way out, to accost 
him. Presently, lo and behold ! Loeh entered the restaurant 
and walked straight up to Huntington’s table, evidently 
by appointment. I nearly groaned. I loiew that Loeb 
had a spacious sample-room at his hotel, with scores of 
garments himg out, and even with wire figures. It was clear 
that Huntington had visited it or was going to, while I 
could not even get him to hear my prices. Was that fair? 
I saw the law of free competition, the great law of struggle 
and the survival of the fittest, defied, violated, desecrated. 

I discovered the residence of Huntington’s assistant, 
and called on her. I had offered presents to other assistant 
buyers and some of them had been accepted, so I tried the^ 
same method in this case — ^with an imfortunate result.. 
Huntington’s assistant not only rejected my bribe, but 
flew into a passion to boot, and it was all my powers of 
pleading could do to have her promise me not to report 
the matter to her principal. 

I learned that Himtington was a member of the Elks 
and a frequenter of their local club-house, but, unfor- 
tunately, I was not a member of that order. 

I went to the Yiddish-speaking quarter of St. Louis> 
made the acquaintance of a man who was ready to sell me, 
on the instalment plan, everything under the stm, from a 
house lot and a lottery ticket to a divorce, and who under- 
took to find me (for ten dollars) somebody who would give 
me a “first-class introduction’’ to Huntington; but his 
eager eloquence failed to convince me. I had my coat 
pressed by a Jewish tailor whose place was around the 
comer from Huntington’s residence and who pressed his 
suits for him. I had a shave in the barber shop at which 
Huntington kept his shaving-cup. I learned something of 
the great man’s family life, of his character, ways, habits. 
It proved that he lived quite modestly, and that his income 
was somewhere between sixty and seventy dollars a week. 
Mine was three times as large. That I should have to 
rack my brains, do detective work, and be subjected to all 

335 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 

sorts of humiliation in an effort to obtain an audience with 
him seemed to be a most absurd injustice. 

I was losing precious time, but I could not bring myself 
to get away from St. Louis without having had the desired 
interview. Huntington’s name was buzzing in my mind 
like an insect. It was a veritable obsession. 

My talk with his barber led me to a bowling-alley. Be- 
ing a passionate bowler, the cloak-buyer visited the place 
for an hour or so three or four times a week. As a con- 
sequence of this discovery I spent two afternoons and an 
evening there, practising a game which I had never even 
heard of before. 

My labors were not thrown away. The next evening I 
saw Himtington and a son of his in the place and we bowled 
some games together. Seen at close range, the cloak- 
buyer was a commonplace-looking fellow. I thought that 
he did not look much older than his son, and that both of 
them might have just stepped out from behind a necktie 
counter. I searched the older man’s countenance for marks 
of astuteness, initiative, or energy, without being able to 
find any. But he certainly was a forcible bowler. 

When he made a sensational hit and there broke out a 
roar of admiration I surpassed all the other bystanders in 
exuberance. “I must not overdo it, though,” I cautioned 
myself. “ He cannot be a fool. He’ll see through me.” 

His son was apparently very proud of him, so I said to 
the young man: 

“Anybody can see your father is an energetic man.” 

“You bet he is,” the young man returned, appreciatively. 

I led him on and he told me about his father’s baseball 
record. I dropped a remark about his being “successful 
in business as well as in athletics” and wound up by intro- 
ducing myself and asking to be introduced to his father. 
It was a rather dangerous venture, for the older Huntington 
was apt to remember my name, in which case my efforts 
might bring me nothing but a rebuff. Anyhow, I took the 
plunge and, to my great delight, he did not seem ever to 
have heard of me. 

Ten minutes later the three of us were seated over glasses 
of lager in the beer-garden with which the bowling-alley 
was connected. I told them that I was from New York 
and that I had come to St. Louis partly on business and 
336 


ON THE ROAD 

partly to visit a sister who lived in their neighborhood. 
The elder Huntington said something of the rapid growth 
of New York, of its new high buildings. His English was 
curiously interspersed with a bookish phraseology that 
seemed to be traceable to the high-flown advertisements of 
his department in the newspapers. I veered the conversa- 
tion from the architectural changes that had come over 
New York to changes of an ethnographic character. 

“Our people, immi^ants from Russia, I mean, are be- 
ginning to play a part in the business life of the city,” I said. 

“Are you a Russian?” he asked. 

“I used to be,” I ansv/ered, with a smile. “I am an 
American now.” 

“That’s right.” 

“You see, we are only new-comers. The German Jews 
began coming a great many years ahead of us, but we can’t 
kick, either.” 

“I suppose not,” he said, genially. 

“For one thing, we are the early bird that gets, or is 
boimd to get, the worm. I mean it in a literal sense. Our 
people go to business at a much earlier hour and go home 
much later. There is quite a number of them in your line 
of business, too.” 

“I know,” he said. “Of course, the ‘hands’ are mostly 
Russian Hebrews, but some of them have gone into manu- 
facturing, and I don’t doubt but they’ll make a success 
of it.” 

“Why, they are making a success of it, Mr. Huntington.” 

I felt that I was treading on risky gound, that he might 
smell a rat at any moment; but I felt, also, that when he 
heard why manufacturers of my type were able to imdersell 
the big old firms he would find my talk too tempting to cut 
it short. And so I rushed on. I explained that the 
Russian cloak-manufacturer operated on a basis of much 
lower profits and figured down expenses to a point never 
dreamed of before; that the German- American cloak- 
manufacturer was primarily a merchant, not a tailor; 
that he was compelled to leave things to his designer and 
a foreman, whereas his Russian competitor was a tailor or 
cloak-operator himself, and was, therefore, able to economize 
in ways that never occurred to the heads of the old houses. 

“I see,” Huntington said, with a queer stare at me. 

337 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 

“Besides, owe people content themselves with small 
profits,” I pursued. “We are modest.” 

Here I plagiarized an epigram I had heard from Meyer 
Nodelman: 

“Our German co-religionists will spend their money 
before they have made it, while we try to make it first.” 

I expected Huntington to smile, but he did not. He was 
listening with sphinx-like gravity. When I paused, my face 
and my ears burning, he said, with some embarrassment: 

“What is your business, may I ask?” 

“I am in the same line. Cloaks.” 

“Are you?” With another stare. 

Tense with excitement, I said, with daredevil reckless- 
ness: 

“The trouble is that successful men like yourself are so 
hard to get at, Mr. Huntington.” 

“What do you mean?” he said, with a cryptic laugh. 

I made a clean breast of it. 

Perhaps he was flattered by my picture of him as an in- 
accessible magnate; perhaps he simply appreciated the 
joke of the thing and the energy and tenacity I had brought 
to it, but he let me narrate the adventiire in detail. I 
told him the bare truth, and I did so with conscious simple- 
heartedness, straining every nerve to make a favorable 
impression. 

As he listened he repeatedly broke into laughter, and 
when I had finished he said to his son: 

“Sounds like a detective story, doesn’t it?” 

But his demeanor was still enigmatic, and I anxiously 
wondered whether I impressed him as an energetic busi- 
ness man or merely as an adventurer, a crank, or even a 
crook. 

“All I ask for is an opportunity to show you my samples, 
Mr. Huntington,” I said. 

“Well,” he answered, deliberately, “there can be no 
harm in that.” And after a pause, “You’ve bagged your 
game so far as that’s concerned.” 

And he merrily made me an appointment for the next 
morning. 


About a month later I came across Loeb on Broadway, 
New York. 

338 


ON THE ROAD 


“By the way,” he said, in the course of our brief talk, with 
a twinkle in his eye, “ did you sell anything to Huntington?” 

“ Huntington? St. Louis? Why, he really is a hard man 
to reach,” I answered, glumly. 

At that very moment my cutters were at work on a big 
order from Himtington, largely for copies from Loeb’s 
styles. I had filled a test order of his so promptly and so 
completely to his satisfaction, and my prices were so over- 
whelmingly below those in L^eb’s bill, that the St. Louis 
buyer had wired me a “duplicate” for eight hundred suits. 

There was a buyer in Cleveland, a bright, forceful little 
man who would not let a salesman quote his price until 
he had made a guess at it. His name was Lernmelmann. 
He was an excellent business man and a charming fellow, 
but he had a weakness for parading his ability to estimate 
the price of a garment “down to a cent.” The salesmen 
naturally humored this ambition of his and every time he 
made a correct guess they would applaud him without stint, 
and I would follow their example. On one occasion I came 
to Cleveland with two especi^y prepared compliments in 
my mind. 

“Every human being has five senses,” I said to the little 
buyer. “You have six, Mr. Lernmelmann. You were 
bom with a price sense besides the ordinary five.” 

“My, but it’s a good one,” he returned, jovially. 

“Yes, you have more senses than anybody else, Mr. 
Lernmelmann,” I added. “You’re the most sensible man 
in the world.” 

“Why — why, you can send stuff like that to Puck or 
Judge and get a five-dollar bill for it. How much will you 
charge me? Will that do?” he asked, handing me a cigar. 

The two compliments cemented our friendship. At 
least, I thought they did. 

Another buyer, in Atlanta, Georgia, had a truly wonder- 
ful memory. He seemed to remember every sample he 
had ever seen — goods, lines, trimmings, price, and all. 
He was an eccentric man. Sometimes he would receive a 
crowd of salesmen in rapid succession, inspect their mer- 
chandise and hear their prices without making any pur- 
chase. Later, sometimes on the same day, he would send 
out orders for the “numbers” that had taken his fancy. 

339 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 


While showing him my samples one morning I essayed 
to express amazement at his unusual memory. But in 
this case I mistook my man. 

“If everybody had your marvelous memory there would 
be little work for bookkeepers,” I jested. 

Whereupon he darted an impatient glance at me and 
growled: “Never mind my memory. You sell cloaks and 
suits, don’t you? If you deal in taffy, you’ll have to see 
the buyer of the candy department.” 


CHAPTER VI 


H untington was a rising man and the other cloak- 
buyers were watchng him. When it became known 
that there was a yotmg manufacturer named Levinsky with 
whom he was placing heavy orders I began to attract 
general attention. My reputation for selling “first-rate 
stuff” for the lowest prices quoted spread. Buyers would 
call at my rookery of a shop before I had time to seek an 
interview with them. The appearance of my place and 
the crudity of my office facilities, so far from militating 
against my progress, helped to accelerate it. Skeptical 
buyers who had doubted my ability to undersell the old- 
established houses became convinced of it when they 
inspected my primitive-looking establishment. 

The place became far too small for me. I moved to 
much larger quarters, consisting of the two uppermost 
floors and garret of a double tenement-house of the old 
type. A haU bedroom was converted into an office, the 
&*st separate room I ever had for the purpose, and I en- 
joyed the possession of it as much as I had done my first 
check-book. I had a lounge put in it, and often, at the 
height of the manufacturing season, when I worked from 
daybreak far into the night and lived on sandwiches, I 
would, instead of going home for the night, snatch three or 
foiir hours’ sleep on it. The only thing that annoyed me 
was a faint odor of mold which filled my bedroom-office 
and which kept me in mind of the Margolises’ old apartment. 
There was the pain of my second love-affair in that odor, 
for, although I had not seen Dora nor heard of her for more 
than two years, I still thought of her often, and when I did 
her image still gave me pangs of yearning. 

There was an air of prosperity and growth about my new 
place, but this did not interfere with the old air of skimpi- 
ness and cheapness as to nmning expenses and other ele- 
ments that go to make up the cost of production. 

341 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 

Bender’s salary had been raised substantially, so much 
so that he had resigned his place as evening-school teacher, 
devoting himself exclusively to my shop and office. He 
was provokingly childish as ever, but he had learned a vast 
deal about the cloak business, its mechanical branch as 
well as the commercial end of it, and his usefulness had 
grown enormously. 

One morning I was hustling about my garret floor, 
vibrating with energy and self-importance, when he came 
up the stairs, saying: 

“There is a woman on the main floor who wants to see 
you. She says you know her.” 

Was it Dora? I descended the stairs in a flutter. 

I was mistaken. It was Mrs. Chaikin. She looked 
haggard and more than usually frowsy. The cause of her 
pitiable appearance was no riddle to me. I knew that her 
husband’s partner had made a mess of their business and 
that Chailan had lost all his savings. “Does she want a 
loan?” I speculated. 

My first impulse was to take her to my little office, but 
I instantly realized that it would not be wise to flaunt 
such a mark of my advancement before her. I offered her 
a chair in a comer of the room in which 1 found her. 

‘ ‘ How is Chaikin ? How is Maxie ? ’ ’ 

“Thank God, Maxie is quite a boy,” she answered, 
coyly. “Why don’t you come to see him? Have you 
forgotten him? He has not forgotten you. Always asking 
about ‘ Uncle Levinsky.’ Some little children have a better 
memory than some grown people.” 

Having delivered this thrust, she swept my shop with a 
sepulchral glance, followed by a succession of nods. Then 
she said, with a grin at once wheedling and malicious: 

“There are two more floors, aren’t there? And I see 
you’re very busy, thank God. Plenty of orders, hey? 
Thank God. Well, when Chaikin gets something started 
and there is nobody to spoil it, it’s sure to go well. Isn’t 
it?” 

“Chaikin is certainly a fine designer,” I replied, non- 
committally, wondering what she was driving at. 

“A fine designer! Is that all?” she protested, with 
exquisite sarcasm. ‘ ‘ And who fixed up this whole business ? 
Who did not sleep nights to get it all going? And whose 

342 


ON THE ROAD 

styles got the business started and gave it the name it has? 
Only ‘ a fine designer, ’ indeed ! It’s a good thing you admit 
that much at least. Well, but what’s the use quarreling? 
I am here as a friend, not to make threats. That’s not in 
my nature.” 

She gave me a propitiating look, and paused for my reply. 

^ “What do you mean, Mrs. Chaikin?” I asked, with an 
air of complaisant perplexity. 

‘ ‘ ' What do you mean ? ’ ” she mocked me, suavely. ‘ ‘ Poor 
fellow, he doesn’t imderstand what a person means. He has 
no head on his shoulders, the poor thing. But what’s the 
good beating about the bush, Levinsky? I am here to tell 
you that we have decided to come back and be partners 
again.” 

I did not burst into laughter. I just looked her over, and 
said, in the calmest and most business-like manner: 

“That’s impossible, Mrs. Chaikin. The business doesn’t 
need any partner.” 

“ Doesn’t need any partner! But it’s otu*s, this business, 
as much as yours; even more. It is our sweat and our 
blood. Why, you hadn’t a cent to yoiur name when we 
started it, and you know it. And what did you have, pray ? 
Did you know anything about cloaks? Could you do 
an5rthing without Chaikin?” 

“We won’t argue about it, Mrs. Chaikin.” 

“ Not argue about it?” 

She was working herself into a rage, but she nipped it in 
the bud. “ Now, look here, Levinsky,” she said, with fresh 
suavity. “I have told you I haven’t come here to pick a 
quarrel. Maxie misses you very much. He’s ^ways 
speaking about you.” She tried a tone of persuasion, 
“^^en Chaikin and you are together again the busing 
will go like grease. You know it will. He’ll be the inside 
man and you’ll attend to the outside business. You won’t 
have to worry about anything around the shop, and, well, 
I needn’t tell you what his designs will do for the business. 
Why, the Manheimers are just begging him to become 
their partner” (this was a lie, of course), “but I say: 
‘No, Chaikin! Better let us stick to our own business, 
even if it is much smaller, and let’s be satisfied with what- 
ever God is pleased to give us.’” 

Her protestations and pleadings proving ineffectual, she 
343 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 

burst into another fury and made an ugly scene, threatening 
to retain “the biggest lawyer in the ’Nited States” and to 
commence action against me. 

I smiled. 

“Look at him! He’s smiling!” she said, addressing her- 
self to some of my men. “He thinks he can swindle people 
and be left alone.” 

“Better go home, Mrs. Chaikin,” I said, impatiently. 
“I have no time.” 

“All right. We shall see!” she snapped, flouncing out. 
Before she closed the door on herself she returned and, 
stalking up to the chair which she had occupied a minute 
before, she seated herself again, defiantly. “Chase me 
out, if you dare,” she said, with a sneer, her chin in the 
air. “I should just like to see you do it. Should like 
to see you chase me out of my own shop. It’s all mine! 
all mine!” she shouted, her voice mounting hysterically. 
“All mine! Chaikin’s sweat and blood. You’re a swin- 
dler, a thief! I’ll put you in Sing Sing.” 

She went off into a swoon, more or less affected, and when 
I had brought her to herself she shed a flood of quiet tears. 

“Take pity, oh, do take pity!” she besought, patting my 
hand. “You have a Jewish heart; you’ll take pity.” 

There was nothing for it but to edge out of the room and 
to hide myself. 

A week later she came again, this time with Maxie, whom 
I had not seen for nearly three years and who seemed to 
have grown to double his former size. On this occasion she 
threatened to denoimce me to the Cloak-makers’ Union for 
employing scab labor. Finally she made a scene that caused 
me to whisper to Bender to telephone for a policeman. 
Before compl5dng, however, he tried persuasion. 

“You had better go, madam,” he said to her, meekly. 
“You are excited.” 

Partly because he was a stranger to her, but mainly, I 
think, because of his American appearance and English, 
she obeyed him at once. 

The next day her husband came. He looked so worn and 
wretched and he was so ill at ease as he attempted to explain 
his errand that I could scarcely make out his words, but I 
received him well and my manner was encouraging, so he 
soon found his tongue. 


344 


ON THE ROAD 

“Don’t you care to have it in the old way again?” he 
said, piteously. 

“Why, I wish I could, Mr. Chaikin. I should be very 
glad to have you here. I mean what I say. But it’s really 
impossible.” 

“I should try my best, you know.” 

“I know you would.” 

After a pause he said: “She’ll drive me into the grave. 
She makes my life so miserable.” 

“But it was she who made you get out of our partner- 
ship,” I remarked, sympathetically. 

“Yes, and now she blames it all on me. When she heard 
you had moved to a larger place she fainted. Couldn’t 
you take me back?” 

He finally went to work as a designer for one of the old 
firms, at a smaller salary than his former employers had 
paid him. 

For the present I continued to worry along with my 
free-lance designer, but as a matter of fact Chaikin’s won- 
derful feeling for line and color was, unbeknown to himself, 
in my service. The practice of pirating designs was 
rapidly becoming an open secret, in fact. Styles put out 
by the big houses were copied by some of their tailors, who 
would sell the drawing for a few dollars to some of the 
smaller houses in plenty of time before the new cloak or 
suit had been placed on the market. In this manner it 
was that I obtained, almost regularly, copies of Chaikin’s 
latest designs. 

The period of dire distress that smote the country about 
this time — ^the memorable crisis of 1893 — dealt me a stag- 
gering blow, but I soon recovered from it. The crisis had 
been preceded by a series of bitter conflicts between the 
old manufacturers and the Cloak-makers’ Union, in the 
form of lockouts, strikes, and criminal proceedings against 
the leaders of the union, which had proved fatal to both. 
The union was stiU in existence, but it was a mere shadow 
of the formidable body that it had been three years before. 
And, as work was scarce, labor cotild be had for a song, as 
the phrase goes. This enabled me to make a number of 
comparatively large sales. To tell the truth, the decay of 
the union was a soxirce of regret to me, as the special talents , 
23 345 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 

I had developed for dodging it while it was ^werful had 
formerly given me an advantage over a majority of my 
competitors which I now did not enjoy. Everybody was 
now practically free from its control. Everybody cotdd 
have aU the cheap labor he wanted. 

Still, I was one of a minority of cloak-manufacturers who 
contrived to bring down the cost of production to an ex- 
traordinarily low level, and so I gradually obtained con- 
siderable business, rallying from the shock of the panic 
before it was well over. 


CHAPTER VII 


T he panic was followed by a carnival of prosperity 
of which I received a generous share. My business 
was progressing with leaps and bounds. 

The factory and office were moved to Broadway. This 
time it was a real office, with several bookkeepers, stenog- 
raphers, model girls, and golden legends on the doors. 
These legends were always glittering in my mind. 

People were loading me with flattery. Everybody was 
telling me that I had “got there,” and some were hinting, 
or sa3dng in so many words, that I was a man of rare gifts, 
of exceptional character. I accepted it all as my due. 
Nay, I regarded myself as rather underestimated. “They 
don’t really understand me,” I would think to myself. 
“They know that I possess brains and grit and all that sort 
of thing, but they are too commonplace to appreciate the 
subtlety of my thoughts and feelings.” 

Every successful man is a Napoleon in one thing at least — 
in believing himself the ward of a lucky star. I was no 
exception to this rule. I came to think myself infallible. 
In short, prosperity had turned my head. 

I looked upon poor people with more contempt than ever. 
I still called them “misfits,” in a Darwinian sense. The 
removal of my business to Broadway was an official con- 
firmation of my being one of the fittest, and those golden 
inscriptions on my two office doors seemed to proclaim it 
solemnly. 

At the same time I did not seem to be successful enough. 
I felt as though my rewards were inadequate. I was now 
worth more than one hundred thousand dollars, and the sum 
did not seem to be anything to rejoice over. My fortune 
was not climbing rapidly enough. I was almost tempted 
to stamp my foot and snarlingly urge it on. Only one 
hundred thousand! Why, there were so many illiterate 
347 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 

dunces who had not even heard of Darwin and Spencer and 
who were worth more. 

There were moments, however, when my success would 
seem something incredible. That was usually when I 
chanced to think of some scene of my past life with special 
vividness. Could it be possible that I was worth a himdred 
thousand dollars, that I wore six-dollar shoes, ate dollar 
lunches, and had an army of employees at my beck and 
call? 

I never recalled my unrealized dreams of a college educa- 
tion without experiencing a qualm of regret. 

One day — ^it was a drizzly afternoon in April — as I 
walked along Broadway under my imibreUa I came across 
Jake Mindels, the handsome young man who had been my 
companion during the period when I was preparing for 
City College. I had not seen him for over two years, 
but I had kept track of his career and I knew that 
he had recently graduated from the University Medical 
College and had opened a doctor’s office on Rivington 
Street. His studiously dignified carriage, his Prince Albert 
coat, the way he wore his soft hat, the way he held his 
open imibrella, and, above all, the beard he was grow- 
ing, betrayed a desire to look his new part. And he 
did look it, too. The nascent beard, the frock-coat, and 
the soft hat became him. He was handsomer than ever, 
and there was a new air of quiet, though conscious, in- 
tellectual importance about him. 

The sight of him as I beheld him coming toward me gave 
me a pang of envy. 

‘ ‘ Levinsky ! How are you ? How are you ?” he shouted, 
flinging himself at me effusively. 

“I hear you’re practising medicine,” I returned. And, 
looking him over gaily, I added, “A doctor every inch of 
you.” 

He blushed. 

“And you’re a rich man, I hear.” 

“Vanderbilt is richer, I can assure you, I should change 
places with you any time.” 

In my heart I remarked, “Yes, I am worth a himdred 
thousand dollars, while he is probably struggling to make 
a living, but I can beat him at his own intellectual game, 
too, even if he has studied anatomy and physiology.” 

348 


ON THE ROAD 

** Well, you will be a Vanderbilt some day. You’re only 
beginning to make money. People say you are a great 
success. I was so glad to hear of it.” 

“And I am glad to hear that you were glad,” I jested, 
gratefully. “And how are things with you?” 

“All right,” he answered, firmly. “I can’t complain. 
For the time I’ve been practising I am doing very well. 
Very well, indeed.” 

He told me of a case in which one of the oldest and most 
successful physicians on the East Side had made a false 
diagnosis, and where he, Mindels, had made the correct one 
and saved the patient’s life. 

‘ ‘ The family wouldn’t hear of another doctor now. They 
would give their lives for me,” he said, writh a simper. 

I took him up to my factory and showed him about. He 
was lavish in his expressions of surprise at the magnitude 
of my concern, and when I asked him to have dinner with 
me that evening he seemed to be more than pleased. 
Apart from other feelings, he was probably glad to renew 
acquaintance with a man who could afford to pay a decent 
doctor’s bill, and through whom he might get in touch with 
other desirable patrons. 

Presently he wrinkled his forehead, as though he had 
suddenly remembered something. 

“Oh! Let me seel” he said. “Couldn’t we postpone 
it? I have a confinement this evening. I expect to be 
called at any moment.” 

We changed the date, and he departed. I was left some- 
what excited by the reminiscences that the meeting had 
evoked in me. I feU to pacing the floor of my office, 
ruminating upon the change which the past few years had 
wrought in his life and in mine. His boastful garrulity 
was something new in him. Was it the struggle for exist- 
ence which was forcing it upon him? I wondered whether 
that confinement story was not a fib invented to flaunt 
his professional success. Thereupon I gave myself credit 
for my knowledge of human nature. “That’s one of 
the secrets of my success,” I thought. I complimented 
myself upon the possession of all sorts of talents, but 
my keenest ambition was to be recognized as an unerring 
judge of men. 

The amusing part of it was that in 1894, for example, I 
349 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 


found that in 1893 my judgment of men and things had 
been immature and puerile. I was convinced that now 
at last my insight was a thoroughly reliable instrument, 
only a year later to look back upon my opinions of 1894 
with contempt. I was everlastingly revising my views 
of people, including my own self. 


BOOK XI 
MATRIMONY 


. i x :4oo,a .. 

Y^OWJHTAM 




%a 





CHAPTER I 


O NE afternoon in January or February I was on a 
Lexington Avenue car going up-town. At Sixty- 
seventh Street the car was invaded by a vivacious crowd 
of young girls, each with a stack of books under one of 
her arms. It was evident that they were returning home 
from Normal College, which was on that comer. &me of 
them preferred to stand, holding on to straps, so as to face 
and converse with their seated chums. 

I was watching them as they chattered, laughed, or 
whispered, bubbhng over with the joy of being young and 
with the consciousness of their budding womanhood, when 
my attention was attracted to one of their number — ^a tall, 
lanky, long-necked lass of fifteen or sixteen. She was 
hanging on to a strap directly across the car from me. I 
could not see her face, but the shape of her head and a 
certain jerk of it, when she laughed, looked strikingly 
familiar to me. Presently she chanced to turn half-way 
aroimd, and I recognized her. It was Lucy. I had not 
seen her for six years. She was completely changed and 
yet the same. Not yet fully formed, elongated, attenuated, 
angular, ridiculously too tall for her looks, and not quite 
so pretty as she had been at nine or ten, but overflowing 
with color, with light, with blossoming life, she thrilled 
me almost to tears. I was aching to call out her name, to 
hear myself say “Lucy” as I had once been wont to do, 
but I was not sure that it would be advisable to let her 
father hear of my lingering interest in his family. While I 
was thus debating with myself whether I should accost her, 
her glance fell on me. She transferred it to one of the win- 
dows, and the next moment she fell to eying me furtively. 

“She has recognized me, but she won’t come over to 
me,” I thought. “She seems to be aware of her father’s 
jealousy.” It was a painful moment. 

353 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 

Presently her fresh, youthful face brightened up. She 
bent over to two of her girl friends and whispered some- 
thing to them, and then these threw glances at me. After 
some more whispering Lucy faced about boldly and stepped 
over to me. 

“I beg your pardon. Aren’t you Mr. Levinsky?” she 
asked, with sweet, girlish shyness. 

“Of course I am, Lucy! Lucy dear, how are you? 
Quite a young lady!” 

“ I was wondering,” she went on without answering. 
“At first I did not know. You did seem familiar to me, but 
I could not locate your face. But then, all at once, don’t 
you know, I said to myself, ‘Why, it’s Mr. Levinsky.’ Oh, 
I’m so glad to see you.” 

She was all flushed and beaming with the surprise of the 
meeting, with consciousness of the eyes of her class- 
mates who were watching her, and with something else 
which seemed to say : “I am Lucy, but not the little girl you 
used to play with. I am a yoimg woman.” 

“And I was wondering who that tall, charming yoimg 
lady was,” I said. “Lord! how you have grown, Lucy!” 

“Yes, I’m already taller than mother and father,” she 
answered. 

“Than both together?” 

“No, not as bad as all that,” she giggled. 

For children of our immigrants to outgrow their parents, 
not only intellectually, but physically as well, is a common 
phenomenon. Perhaps it is due to their being fed far 
better than their parents were in their childhood and youth. 

I asked Lucy to take a seat by my side and she did, cheer- 
fully. (“Maybe she does not know anything,” I wondered.) 

“How is Danny?” I asked. “Still fat?” 

“No, not very,” she laughed. “He goes to school. I 
have a little sister, too,” she added, blushing the least bit. 

I winced. It was as though I had heard something re- 
voltingly unseemly. Then a thought crossed my mind, 
and, seized with an odd feeling of curiosity, I asked: 

“How old is she?” 

“Oh, a httle less than a year,” Lucy replied. “She’s 
awful cute,” she laughed. 

“And how is papa?” I inquired, to turn the conversation. 

“He’s aU right, thank you,” she answered, gravely. 

354 


MATRIMONY 

“Only he lost a lot of money on account of the hard times. 
Many of his customers were out of work. Business is 
picking up, though.” 

“And how is Becky? Are you still great friends?” 

“Why, she ought to be here!” she replied, gazing around 
the car. “ Must be in the next car.” 

“In another carl” I exclaimed, in mock amazement. 
“Not by your side?” 

Lucy laughed. “We are in the same class,” she said. 

“And, of course, the families still Hve in the same house?” 

She nodded affirmatively, adding that they lived at 
One Hundred and Second Street near Madison Avenue, 
about a block and a half from the Park. 

“Come up some time, won’t you?” she gurgled, with 
childish amiability, yet with apparent awkwardness. 

I wondered whether she was aware of her father’s jealousy. 

“If she were she certainly would not invite me to the 
house,” I reflected. 

I made no answer to her invitation. 

“Won’t you come up?” she insisted. 

I thought: “She doesn’t seem to know anything about 
it. She has only heard that I had a quarrel with her 
mother.” I shook my head, smiling affectionately. 

“Why, are you still angry at mother?” she pursued, 
shaking her head, deprecatingly, as who should say, “You’re 
a bad boy.” 

I thought, “Of course she doesn’t know.” I smiled 
again. Then I said: 

“You’re a sweet girl, all the same. And a big one, too.” 

“Thank you. Do come. Will you?” 

I shook my head. 

“Will you never come?” she asked, plajrfuUy. “Never? 
Never?” 

“I have told you you’re a charming girl, haven’t I? 
What more do you want?” 

The American children of the Ghetto are Americ^ not 
only in their language, tastes, and ambitions, but in out- 
ward appearance as well. Their bearing, gestures, the 
play of their features, and something in the very expression 
of their Semitic faces proclaim the land of their birth. All 
this was true of Lucy. She was fascinatingly American, 
and I told her so. 


355 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 

“You’re not simply a charming girl. You’re a charming 
American girl,” I said. 

I wondered whether Dora had been keeping up her 
studies, and by questioning Lucy about the books under 
her arm I contrived to elicit the information that her 
mother had read not only such works as the Vicar of 
Wakefield, Washington Irving’s Sketch Book, and Lamb’s 
Shakespeare Stories, which had been part of Lucy’s course 
during her first year at college, but that she had also read 
some of the works of Cooper, George Eliot, Dickens, 
Thackeray, Hawthorne, and all sorts of cheaper novels. 

“Mother is a great reader,” Lucy said. “She reads 
more than I do. Why, she reads newspapers and maga- 
zines — everything she can lay her hands on! Father c5ls 
her Professor.” 

She also told me that her mother had read a good deal 
of poetry, that she knew the “Ancient Mariner” and “The 
Raven” by heart. 

“She’s always at me because I don’t care for poetry as 
much as she does,” she laughed. 

“Well, you’re not taller than your mother in this respect, 
are you?” 

“N-no,” she assented, with an appreciative giggle. 

She left the car on the comer of One Hundred and Second 
Street. I was in a queer state of excitement. 

It flashed upon my mind that the section of Central 
Park in the vicinity of One Hundred and Second Street 
teemed with women and baby-carriages, and that it was 
but natural to suppose that Dora would be out every day 
wheeling her baby in that locality, and reading a book, 
perhaps. I visioned myself meeting her there some after- 
noon and telling her of my undying love. I even worked 
out the details of the plan, but I felt that I should never 
carry it out. 

I still loved Dora, but that was the Dora of six years 
before, an image of an enshrined past. She was a dear, 
sad memory, scarcely anything more, and it seemed as 
though to disturb that sadness were sacrilege. 

“I shall probably run up against her some day,” I said 
to myself, dolefully. 

And an echo seemed to add, “You are all alone in the 
world!” 

356 


CHAPTER II 


I WAS a lonely man. 

I was pulsating with activity and with a sense of 
triumph. I was receiving miiltitudes of new impressions 
and enjoying life in a miiltitude of ways, with no dearth 
of woman and song in the program. But at the bottom 
of my consciousness I was always lonely. 

There were moments when my desolation would assert 
itself rather violently. This happened nearly every time I 
returned to New York from the road. As the train entered 
the great city my sense of home-coming would emphasize 
a feeling that the furnished two-room apartment on Lexing- 
ton Avenue which was waiting to receive me was not a 
home. 

Meyer Nodelman, whom I often met in a Broadway 
restaurant at the limch hour these days, would chaff or 
lecture me earnestly upon my unmarried state. 

“You don’t know who you’re working for,’’ he would 
say, his sad, Oriental face taking on an affectionate ex- 
pression. “Life is short at best, but when a fellow has 
nobody to bear his name after he is gone it is shorter still. 
Get married, my boy. Get married.” 

He took a lively interest in the growth of my business. 
He rejoiced in it as though he ascribed my successes to the 
loans he had given me when I struggled for a foothold. 
He often alluded to those favors, but he was a devoted 
friend, all the same. Moreover, he was a most attractive 
man to talk to, especially when the conversation dealt 
with one’s intimate life. With all his illiteracy and crudity 
of language he had rare insight into the human heart and 
was fidl of subtle sympathy. He was the only person in 
America with whom I often indulged in a heart-to-heart 
confab. He was keenly aware of my loneliness. It seemed 
as though it disturbed him. 

357 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 

'‘You are not a happy man, Levinsky,” he once said to 
me. “You feel more ^one than any bachelor I ever knew. 
You’re an orphan, poor thing. You have a fine business 
and plenty of money and all sorts of nice times, but you 
are an orphan, just the same. You’re still a child. You 
need a mother. Well, but what’s the use? Your own 
mother — ^peace upon her — cannot be brought to life until 
the coming of the Messiah, so do the next best thing, 
Levinsky. Get married and you will have a mother — ^for 
your cMldren. It isn’t the same kind, but you won’t 
feel lonesome any longer.” 

I laughed. 

“Laugh away, Levinsky. But you can’t help it. And 
the smart books you read won’t help you, either. You’ve 
got to get married whether you want it or not. This is a 
bin that must be paid.” 

I had lunch with him a day or two after my meeting with 
Lucy. The sight of his affectionate, melancholy face and 
the warmth of his greeting somehow made me think of 
the sentimental mood in which I had been left by that 
encounter. 

“I do feel lonesome,” I said, with a smile, in the course 
of our chat. “I met a girl the other day — ” 

“Did you?” he said, expectantly. • 

“Oh, she is a mere child, not the kind of girl you mean, 
Mr. Nodelman. I once boarded in her mother’s house. 
She was a mere child then. She is still a child, but she goes 
to college now, and she is taller than her mother. When 
I saw her I felt old.” 

“ Is that an3rthing to be sad about? Pshaw! Get mar- 
ried, and you’ll have a daughter of your own, and when 
she grows up you won’t be sorry. Take it from me, 
Levins^. There can be no greater pleasure than to watch 
your kids grow.” And he added, in a lower tone, “I do 
advise you to get married.” 

“Perhaps I ought to,” I said, listlessly. “But then it 
takes two to make a bargain.” 

“Oh, there are lots of good girls, and you can have the 
best piece of goods there is.” 

“Oh, I don’t know. It wouldn’t be hard to find a good 
girl, perhaps. The question is whether she’ll be good after 
the honeymoon is over.” 


358 


MATRIMONY 

“You don’t want a bond and mortgage to guarantee that 
you’ll be happy, do you? A fellow must be ready to take a 
chance.’’ 

There is an old story of a rabbi who, upon being asked 
by a bachelor whether he should marry, said: “If you 
do you will regret it, my son; but then if you remain single 
you are sure to regret it just as much; perhaps more. So 
get married like everybody else and regret it like every- 
body else.’’ Nodelman now quoted that rabbi. I h^ 
heard the anecdote more than once before, but it seemed 
as though its meaning had now revealed itself to me for 
the first time. 

“According to that rabbi, marriage is not a pleasure, 
but a miserable necessity,’’ I urged. 

“WeU, it isn’t all misery, either. People are fond of 
sa5dng that the best marriage is a curse. But it’s the other 
way around. The worst marriage has some blessing in it, 
Levinsky.’’ 

“Oh, I don’t know.” 

“Get married and you will. There is plenty of pleasure 
in the worst of homes. Take it from me, Levinsky. 
When I come home and feel that I have somebody to live 
for, that it is not the devil I am working for, then — ^take 
it from me, Levinsky — I should not ^ve one moment 
like that for aU the other pleasures in the world put 
together.” 

I thought of his wife whom his mother had repeatedly 
described to me as a “meat-ball face” and a virago, and 
of his home which I had always pictured as hell. His 
words touched me. 

“It isn’t that I don’t want to take chances, Mr. Nodel- 
man. It’s something else. Were you ever in love, Mr. 
Nodelman?” 

“What? Was I in love? Why?” he demanded, color- 
ing. “What put it in your head to ask me such a funny 
question?” 

“Funny! There’s more pain than fim in it. Well, I 
have loved, Mr. Nodehnan, and that’s why it’s so hard for 
me to think of marriage as a cold proposition. I don’t 
think I could marry a girl I did not love.” 

I expected an argument against love-marriages, but Nodel- 
man had none to offer. Instead, he had me dilate on the 

359 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 


bliss and the agony of loving. He asked me questions and 
eagerly listened to my answers. I told him of my own two 
love-affairs, particularly of my relations with Dora. I 
omitted names and other details that might have pointed, 
ever so remotely, to Mrs. Margolis’s identity. Nodelman 
was interested intensely. His interrogations were of the 
kind that a girl of sixteen who had not yet loved might 
address to a bosom friend who had. How does it feel to be 
in doubt whether one’s passion had foimd an echo? How 
did I feel when our lips were joined in our jSrst kiss? How 
did she carry herself the next time I saw her? Was she 
shy? Did she look happy? Was she afraid of her hus- 
band? Was I afraid? 

The restaurant had been nearly deserted for about an 
hour, and we still sat smoking cigars and whispering. 






CHAPTER III 


O NE day, as Nodelman took his seat across the table 
from me at the restaurant, he said: 

“Well, Levinsky, it’s no use, you’ll have to get mar- 
ried now. There will be no wriggling out of it. My wife 
has set her mind on it.” 

“Your wife?” I asked in surprise. 

“Yes. I have an order to bring you up to the house, 
and that’s all there is to it. Don’t blame her, though. 
The fault is mine. I have told her so much about you she 
wants to know you.” 

“To know me and to marry me off, hey? And yet 
you claim to be a friend of mine.” 

“WeU, it’s no use talking. You’ll have to come.” 

I received a formal invitation, written in English by 
Mrs. Nodelman, and on a Friday night in May I was in my 
friend’s house for supper, as Nodelman called it, or “din- 
ner,” as his wife would have it. 

The family occupied one of a small group of lingering, 
brownstone, private dwellings in a neighborhood swarming 
with the inmates of new tenement “barracks.” 

“Glad to meechye,” Mrs. Nodelman welcomed me. 
“Meyer should have broughchye up long ago. Why did 
you keep Mr. Levinsky away, Meyer? Was you ^raid 
you might have reason to be jealous?” 

“ That’s just it. She hit it right. I told you she was a 
smart girl, didn’t I, Levinsky?” 

“Don’t be uneasy, Meyer. Mr. Levinsky won’t even 
look at an old woman like me. It’s a pretty girl he’s 
fishin’ for. Ainchye, Mr. Levinsky?” 

She was middle-aged, with small features inconspicu- 
ously traced in a bulging mass of full-blooded flesh. This 
was why her mother-in-law called her “meat-ball face.” 
She had a hoarse voice, and altogether she might have 
24 361 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 


given me the impression of being drunk had there not been 
something pleasing in her hoarseness as well as in that droll 
face of hers. That she was American-born was clear from 
the way she spoke her unpolished English. Was Nodel- 
man the henpecked husband that his mother advertised 
him to be? I wondered whether the frequency with which 
his wife used his first name could be accepted as evidence 
to the contrary. 

They had six children: a youth of nineteen named 
Maurice who was the image of his father and, having 
spent two years at college, was with him in the cloth- 
ing business; a high-school boy who had his mother’s 
“meat-ball” face and whose name was Sidney — an ap- 
pellation very popular among our people as “swell Amer- 
ican”; and four smaller children, the youngest being a 
little girl of six. 

“What do you think of my stock, Levinsky?” Nodel- 
man asked. “ Quite a lot, isn’t it? May no evil eye strike 
them. What do you think of the baby? Come here, 
Beatrice! Recite something for uncle!” 

The command had barely left his mouth when Beatrice 
sprang to her feet and burst out mumbling something in a 
landergarten singsong. This lasted some minutes. Then 
she courtesied, shook her skirts, and slipped back into her 
seat. 

“She is only six and she is already more educated than 
her father,” Nodelman said. “And Sidney he’s studyin’ 
French at high school. Sidney, talk some French to Mr. 
Levinsky. He’ll understand you. Come on, show Mr. 
Levinsky you ain’t going to be as ignorant as your pa.” 

The scene was largely a stereotyped copy of the one I 
had witnessed upon my first call at the Margolises’. 

Sidney scowled. 

“Come on, Sidney, be a good boy,” Nodelman urged, 
taking him by the sleeve. 

“Let me alone,” Sidney snarled, breaking away and 
striking the air a fierce backward blow with his elbow. 

“What do you want of him?” Mrs. Nodelman said to 
her husband, frigidly. 

My friend desisted, sheepishly. 

“He does seem to be afraid of his American household,” 
I said to myself. 


362 


MATRIMONY 

After the meal, when we were all in the parlor again, 
Nodehnan said to his wife, winking at me: 

‘ Poor fellow, his patience has all given out. He wants 
to know about the girl you’ve got for him. He has no 
strength any longer. Can’t you see it, Bella? Look at 
him! Look at him! Another minute and he’ll faint.” 

“What girl? Oh, I see! Why, there is more than one!” 
Mrs. Nodelman returned, confusedly. ‘T didn’t mean 
anybody in particular. There are plenty of young ladies.” 

“That’s the trouble. There are plenty, and no one in 
particular,” I said. 

“Don’t cry,” Nodelman said. “Just be a good boy and 
Mrs. Nodelman will get you a peach of a young lady. 
Won’t you, Bella?” 

“I guess so,” she answered, with a smile. 

“Don’t you understand?” he proceeded to explain. 
“She first wants to know the kind of customer you are. 
Then she’ll know what kind of merchandise to look for. 
Isn’t that it, Bella?” 

She made no answer. 

“ I hope Mrs. Nodelman will find me a pretty decent sort 
of customer,” I put in. 

“You’re all right,” she said, demurely. “I’m afraid it 
won’t be an easy job to get a young lady to suit a customer 
like you.” 

“Try yoiu* best, will you?” I said. 

“I certainly will.” 

She was less talkative now, and certainly less at her ease 
than she had been before the topic was broached, which 
impressed me rather favorably. Altogether she was far 
from the virago or “witch” her mother-in-law had de- 
scribed her to be. As to her attitude toward her husband, 
I subsequently came to the conclusion that it was a blend 
of affection and contempt. Nodelman was henpecked, but 
not badly so. 

I called on them three or four times more during that 
spring. Somehow the question of my marriage was never 
mentioned on these occasions, and then Mrs. Nodelman 
and the children, all except Maurice, went to the seashore 
for the summer. 


CHAPTER IV 


“V^OU’LL examine the merchandise, and if you don’t 

I like it nobody is going to make you buy it,” said 
Nodelman to me one day in January of the following winter. 
By “merchandise” he meant a Miss Kalmanovitch, the 
daughter of a wealthy furniture-dealer, to whom I was to be 
introduced at the Nodelman residence four days later. 
“She is a peach of a girl, beautiful as the sun, and no runt, 
either; a lovely girl.” 

“Good looks aren’t everything. Beauty is skin deep, 
and handsome is as handsome does,” I paraded my English. 

“Oh, she is a good girl every way: a fine housekeeper, 
good-natured, and educated. Gee! how educated she is! 
Why, she has a pile of books in her room, Bella says, a 
pile that high.” He raised his hand above his head. 
“She is dead stuck on her, Bella is.” 

Owing to an illness in the Kalmanovitch family, the 
projected meeting could not take place, but Nodehnan’s 
birthday was to be celebrated in March, so the gathering 
was to serve as a match-making agency as well as a social 
function. 

The great event came to pass on a Sunday evening. 
The prospect of facing a girl who offered herself as a 
candidate for becoming my wife put me all in a flutter. 
It took me a long time to dress and I made my ap- 
pearance at the Nodelmans’ rather late in the evening. 
Mrs. Nodelman, who met me in the hall, offered me a 
tempestuous welcome. 

“Here he is! Better late than never,” she shrieked, 
hoarsely, as I entered the hall at the head of the high stoop. 
“I was gettin’ uneasy. Honest I was.” And dropping 
her voice: “Miss K^manovitch came on time. She’s a 
good girl. Always.” And she gave me a knowing look 
that brought the color to my face and a coy smile into hers. 

> 364 


MATRIMONY 


Her husband appeared a minute later. After greeting 
me warmly he whispered into my ear: 

“Nobody knows anything about it, not even the young 
lady. Only her mother does.” 

But I soon discovered that he was mistaken. My 
appearance produced a sensation, and the telltale glances 
of the women from me to a large girl with black eyes who 
stood at the mantelpiece not only showed plainly that they 
knew all about “it,” but also indicated who of the young 
women present was Miss Kalmanovitch. 

The spacious parlor was literally jammed. The hostess 
led the way through the throng, introducing me to the 
guests as we proceeded. There were Nodelman’s father 
and mother among them, the gigantic old tailor grinning 
childishly by the side of his wife, who looked glum. 

“That one, with the dark eyes, by the mantelpiece,** 
Meyer Nodelman whispered to me, eagerly. 

The girl pointed out was large and plump, with full 
ivory-hued cheeks, and a dimple in her fleshy chin. Her 
black eyes were large and round. That the object of my 
coming, and of her own, was no secret to her was quite 
evident. She was blushing to the roots of her glossy 
black hair, and in her apparent struggle with her constraint 
she put her stout, long arm around the waist of a girl 
who stood by her side against the mantelpiece. 

Upon the whole. Miss Kalmanovitch impressed me more 
than favorably; but a minute later, when I was introduced 
to her and saw her double chin and shook her gently by a 
hand that was fat and damp with perspiration, I all but 
shuddered. I felt as though she exuded oil. I was in- 
troduced to her mother, a spare, hatchet-face little woman 
with bad teeth, who looked me over in a most business- 
like way, and to her father, a gray man with a goatee. 

Miss Kalmanovitch and I soon found ourselves seated 
side by side. Conscious of being the target of many eyes, 
I was as disconcerted as I had been twelve years before, 
when Matilda played her first practical joke upon my side- 
locks. My would-be fiancee was the first to recover her 
ease. She asked me if I was related to a white-goods man 
named Levinsky, and when I said no she passed to other 
topics. * She led the conversation, and I scarcely followed 
her. At one moment, for example, as I looked her in the 

365 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 

face, endeavoring to listen to what she was saying about the 
Purim ball she had attended, I remarked to myself that the 
name Kalmanovitch somehow seemed to go well with her 
face and figure, and that she was too self-possessed for a 
‘ ‘ bridal candidate. ’ * 

Presently we heard Mrs. Nodehnan's hoarse voice: 

“Now Miss Kalmanovitch will oblige us with some music. 
Won’t you, please, Miss Kalmanovitch?” 

A swarthy, middle-aged woman, with features that some- 
what resembled those of the host, whose cousin she was, 
and with huge golden teeth that glistened good-naturedly, 
took Miss Kalmanovitch by the arm, saying in a mannish 
voice: 

“Come on, Ray! Show them what you can do!” 

My companion rose and, throwing gay glances at some 
of the other girls, she walked over to the piano and seated 
herself. Then, with some more smiles at the girls, she 
cold-bloodedly attacked the keyboard. 

“A nauctourm by Chopin,” her mother explained to me 
in an audible whisper across the room. 

Miss Kalmanovitch was banging away with an effect 
of showing how quickly she could get through the nocturne. 
I am not musical in the accepted meaning of the term, and 
in those days I was even less so than I am now, perhaps, 
but I was always fond of music, and had a discriminating 
feeling for it. At all events, I knew enough to realize 
that my would-be financ^e was playing execrably. But 
her mother, her father, the hostess, and the swarthy woman 
with the golden teeth, were shooting glances at me that 
seemed to say: “What do you think of that? Did you 
ever see such fast playing?” and there was nothing for it 
but to simulate admiration. 

The woman with the great golden teeth, Meyer Nodel- 
man’s cousin, was even more strenuous in her efforts to 
arouse my exultation than Ray’s mother. She was the 
wife of a prosperous teamster whose moving-vans were seen 
all over the East Side. Gaimt, flat-chested, with a solemn 
masculine face, she was known for her jolly disposition and 
good-natured sarcasm. There was something suggestive 
of Meyer Nodelman in her manner of speaking as well as 
in her looks. She was childless and took an insatiable 
interest in the love-affairs and matrimonial politics of 
366 


MATRIMONY 


young people. Her name was Mrs. Kalch, but everybody 
called her Aimtie Yetta. 

When Ray finished pla5dng Auntie Yetta led the ap- 
plause, for ail the world like a ward heeler. When the ac- 
claim had died down she rushed at Ray, pressed her ample 
bosom to her own flat one, kissed her a sounding smack on 
the lips, and exclaimed, with a wink to me: 

“Ever see such a tasty duck of a girl?” 

Miss Kalmanovitch was followed by a bespectacled, 
anemic boy of thirteen who played something by Wieniav- 
sky on the violin, and then Miss Kalmanovitch “obliged” 
us with a recitation from “Macbeth.” There were four 
other solos on the piano and on the violin by boys and girls, 
children of the invited guests, the violinists having brought 
their instruments with them. Not that the concert was 
part of a preconceived program, although it might have 
been taken for granted. The mothers of the performers 
had simply seized the opportunity to display the talents 
of their offspring before an audience. Only one boy — a 
curlyrheaded, long-necked little pianist, introduced as 
Bennie Saminsky — played with much feeling and taste. 
AU the rest grated on my nerves. 

I beguiled the time by observing the women. I noticed, 
for instance, that Auntie Yetta, whose fingers were a 
veritable jewelry-store, now and again made a pretense of 
smoothing her gra3dsh hair for the purpose of exhibiting her 
flaming rings. Another elderly woman, whose fingers were 
as heavily laden, kept them prominently interlaced across 
her breast. From time to time she would flirt her inter- 
locked hands, in feigned absent-mindedness, thus flashing 
her diamonds upon the people around her. At one moment 
it became something like a race between her and Auntie 
Yetta. Nodelman’s cousin caught me watching it, where- 
upon she winked to me merrily and interlaced her own be- 
gemmed fingers, as much as to say, “What do you think 
of our contest?” and burst into a voiceless laugh. 

I tried to listen to the music again. To add to my ordeal, 
I had to lend an ear to the boastful chatter of the mothers 
or fathers on the virtuosity of Bennie, Sidney, Beckie, or 
Sadie. The mother of the curly-headed pianist, the 
illiterate wife of a baker, first wore out my patience and 
then enlisted my interest by a torrent of musical ter- 

367 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 


minology which she apparently had picked up from talks 
with her boy's piano-teacher. She interspersed her un- 
sophisticated Yiddish with English phrases like’ “rare 
technique,” “vonderful touch,” “ bee-youtiful tone,” or 
“poeytic temperament.” She assured me that her son was 
the youngest boy in the United States to play Brahms and 
Beethoven successfully. At first I thought that she was 
prattling these words parrot fashion, but I ^oon realized 
that, to a considerable extent, at least,, she used them 
intelligently. 

She had set her heart upon making the greatest pianist 
in the world of Bennie, and by incessantly discussing him 
with people who were supposed to know something about 
music she had gradually accumulated a smattering ac- 
quaintance with the subject. That she was full of it there 
could be no doubt. Perhaps she had a native intuition for 
music. Perhaps, too, it was from her that her son had 
inherited his feeling for the poetry of sound. She certainly 
had imagination. 

“Some boys play like monkeys,” she said in Yiddish. 
“They don’t know what they are at. May I know evil if 
they do. My Bennie is not that sort of a pianist, thank 
God! He knows what he is talking about — on his piano, 
I mean. You saw for yourself that he played Vvith head 
and heart, didn’t you?” 

“ Indeed, I did,” I said, with ardor. “ I liked his playing 
very much.” 

“Yes, it comes right from his heart,” she pursued. “He 
has a golden temperament. The piano just talks under 
his fingers. I mean what I say. People think a piano is 
just a row of dead pieces of bone or wood. It is not. No, 
sirrah. It has speech just like a human being, provided 
you know how to get it out of the keyboard. Bennie does.” 

In a certain sense this unlettered woman was being 
educated by her little boy in the same manner as Dora 
had been and still was, perhaps, by Lucy. 

There were at least three girls in the gathering who were 
decidedly pretty. One of these was a graduate of Normal 
College. She was dark-eyed, like Miss Kalmanovitch, but 
slender and supple and full of life. Everybody called her 
affectionately by her first name, which was Stella. At the 
supper-table, in the dining-room, I was placed beside Miss 
368 


MATRIMONY 

Kalmanovitch, but I gave most of my attention to Stella, 
who was seated diagonally across the table from us. I 
felt quite at home now. 

“What was your favorite subject at college?” I ques- 
tioned Stella, facetiously. 

“That’s my secret,” she answered. 

“I can guess it, though.” 

“Try.” 

“Dancing.” 

“That’s right,” she shouted, amidst an outburst of 
laughter. 

“Well, have you learned it well?” I went on. 

“Why don’t you ask me for a waltz and find out for 
yourself?” 

“I wish I could, but unfortunately they did not take up 
dancing at my college.” 

“Did you go to college?” Stella asked, seriously. 

“I don’t look like one who did, I suppose. Well, I 
should like to say I did, but I haven’t the heart to tell you 
a lie.” 

“Never mind,” Nodelman broke in. “He’s an edu- 
cated fellar, all the same. He’s awful educated. That’s 
what makes him such a smart business man. By the way, 
Levinsky, how is the merchandise?” 

“This is no place to talk shop,” I replied, deprecatingly. 
“Especially when there are so many pretty ladies around.” 

“That’s right!” several of the women chimed in in 
chorus. 

Mrs. Nodelman, the hostess, who stood in the doorway, 
beckoned to her husband, and he jumped up from the 
table. As he passed by my seat I seized him by an arm 
and whispered into' his ear : 

“The merchandise is too heavy. I want lighter goods.” 
With this I released him and he disappeared with Mrs. 
Nodelman. 

A few minutes later he came back. 

“Be a good boy. Show Ray a little more attention,” he 
whispered into my ear. “Do it for my sake. Will you?” 

“All right.” 

I became aware of Mrs. Kalmanovitch’s fire-flashing 
eyes, and my efforts to entertain her daughter were a poor 
performance. 


369 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 

The Kalmanovitch family left immediately after supper, 
scarcely making their farewells. Portentous sounds came 
from the hallway. We cotild hear Mrs. Kalmanovitch’s 
angry voice. A nervous hush fell over the parlor. Auntie 
Yetta gave us all an eloquent wink. 

“There’s a woman with a tongue for you,” she said in an 
undertone. “Pitch and sulphur. When she opens her 
mouth people had better sound the fire-alarm.” After a 
pause she added: “ Do you know why her teeth are so bad? 
Her mouth is so full of poison, it has eaten them up.” 

Presently the younger Mrs. Nodelman made her ap- 
pearance. Her ruddy “meat-ball” face was fairly ablaze 
with excitement. Her husband followed with a guilty air. 

“What’s the matter with you folks?” the hostess said. 
“Why ainchye doin’ somethin’?” 

“’V^at shall we do?” the baker’s wife answered in Yid- 
dish. “We have eaten a nice supper and we have heard 
music and now we are enjoying ourselves quietly, like the 
gentlemen and the ladies we are. What more do you 
want?” 

“Come, folks, let’s have a dance. Bennie will play us a 
waltz. Quick, Bennie darling! Girls, get a move on you!” 

I called the hostess aside. “May I ask you a question, 
Mrs. Nodelman?” I said, in the manner of a boy addressing 
his teacher. 

“What is it?” she asked, awkwardly. 

“No, I won’t ask any questions. I see you are angry 
at me.” 

“I ain’t angry at all,” she returned, making an effort to 
look me straight in the face. 

“Sure?” 

“Sure,” with a laugh. “What is it you want to ask 
me about?” 

And again assuming the tone of a penitent pupil, I said, 
“May I ask Stella to dance with me?” 

“But you don’t dance.” 

“Let her teach me, then.” 

“Let her, if she wants to. I ain’t her mother, am I?” 

“But you have no objection, have you?” 

“Where do I come in? On my part, you c’n dance with 
every girl in the house.” 

“Oh, you don’t like me this evening, Mrs. Nodelman. 

370 


MATRIMONY 

You are angry witn me. Else you wouldn’t talk the way 
you do.” 

She burst into a laugh, and said, “You’re a heU of a 
fellow, you are.” 

“I know I misbehaved myself, but I couldn’t help it. 
Miss Kalmanovitch is too fat, you know, and her hands 
perspire so.” 

“She’s a charmin’ girl,” she returned, with a hearty 
laugh. “I wish her mother was half so good.” 

“Was she angry, her mother?” 

“Was she! She put all the blame on me. I invited 
her daughter on purpose to make fim of her, she says. My, 
how she carried on!” 

“I’m really sorry, but it’s a matter of taste, you know.” 
“I know it is. I don’t blame you at all.” 

“So you and I are friends again, aren’t we?” 

She laughed. 

“Well, then, you have no objection to my being sweet on 
Stella, have you?” 

“You are a hell of a fellow. That’s just what you are. 
But I might as well tell you it’s no use trying to get Stella. 
She’s already engaged.” 

“Is she really?” 

“Honest.” 

“Well, I don’t care. I’ll take her away from her fellow. 
That’s all there is to it.” 

“You can’t do it,” she said, gaily. “She is dead stuck 
on her intended. They’ll be married in June.” 

I went home a lovesick man, but the following evening 
I went to Boston for a day, and my feeling did not survive 
the trip. 


CHAPTER V 


T hat joumey to Boston is fixed in my memory by 
an incident which is one of my landmarks in the 
history of my financial evolution and, indeed, in the history 
of the American cloak industry. It occurred in the after- 
noon of the Monday which I spent in that city, less than 
two days after that birthday party at the Nodelmans’. 
I was lounging in an easy-chair in the lobby of my 
hotel, when I beheld Loeb, the “star” salesman of what 
had been the “star” firm in the cloak-and-suit business. 
I had not seen him for some time, but I knew that his 
emplo5rers were on their last legs and that he had a hard 
struggle trying to make a living. Nor was that firm the 
only one of the old-established cloak-and-suit concerns 
that found itself in this state at the period in question — 
that is, at the time of the economic crisis and the brnst 
of good times that had succeeded it. Far from ffling their 
coffers from the golden flood of those few years’ they were 
drowned in it almost to a man. The trade was now in the 
hands of men from the ranks of their former employees, 
tailors or cloak operators of Russian or Galician origin, 
some of whom were Talmudic scholars like myself. It was 
the passing of the German Jew from the American cloak 
industry. 

We did profit by the abundance of the period. Moreover, 
there were many among us to whom the crisis of 1893 had 
proved a blessing. To begin with, some of our tailors, being 
unable to obtain employment in that year, had been driven 
to make up a garment or two and to offer it for sale in the 
street, huckster fashion — a venture which in many in- 
stances formed a stepping-stone to a cloak-factory. Others 
of our workmen had achieved the same evolution by em- 
ploying their days of enforced idleness in taking lessons in 
cloak-designing, and then setting up a small shop of their 
own. 


372 


MATRIMONY 


Newfangled manufacturers of this kind were now spring- 
ing up like mushrooms. Joe, my old-time instructor in 
cloak-making, was one of the latest additions to their 
number. They worked — often assisted by their wives and 
children — in all sorts of capacities and at all hours. They 
lived on bread and salmon and were content with almost a 
nominal margin of profit. There were instances when the 
clippings from the cutting-table constituted all the profit 
the business yielded them. Pitted against “manufactur- 
ers” of this class or against a fellow like myself were the 
old-established firms, with their dignified office methods and 
high profit-rates, firms whose fortunes had been sorely 
tried, to boot, by their bitter struggle with the union. 

Loeb swaggered up to me with quizzical joviality as 
usual. But the smug luster of his face was faded and his 
kindly black eyes had an unsteady glance in them that 
belied his vivacity. I could see at once that he felt nothing 
but hate for me. 

“Hello, Get-Rich-Quick Levinsky!” he greeted me. 
“Haven’t seen you for an age.” 

“How are you, Loeb?” I asked, genially, my heart full 
of mixed triumph and compassion. 

We had not been talking five minutes before he grew 
sardonic and venomous. As Division Street — a few blocks 
on the lower East Side — ^was the center of the new type of 
cloak-manufacturing, he referred to us by the name of that 
street. My business was on Broadway, yet I was included 
in the term, “Division Street manufacturer.” 

“What is Division Street going to do next?” he asked. 
“Sell a fifteen-dollar suit for fifteen cents?” 

I smiled. 

“That’s a great place, that is. There are two big busi- 
ness streets in New York — ^Wall Street and Division.” 
He broke into a laugh at his own joke and I charitably 
joined in. I endeavored to take his thrusts good-naturedly 
and for many minutes I succeeded, but at one point when 
he referred to us as “manufacturers,” with a sneering im- 
plication of quotation marks over the word, I flared up. 

“You don’t seem to like the Division Street manufact- 
urers, do you ?” I said. ‘ ‘ I suppose you have a reason for it. ’ ’ 

“I have a reason? Of course I have,” he retorted. “So 
has every other decent man in the business.” 

373 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 

‘ ‘ It depends on what you call decent. Every misfit claims 
to be more decent than the fellow who gets the business.” 

He grew pale. It almost looked as though we were com- 
ing to blows. After a pause he said, with an effect of holding 
himself in leash: 

“Business! Do you call that business? I call it pea- 
nuts.” 

“Well, the peanuts are rapidly growing in size while the 
oranges and the apples are shriiiiing and rotting. The 
fittest survives.” (“A lot he knows about the theory of the 
survival of the fittest!” I jeered in my heart. “He hasn’t 
^even heard the name of Herbert Spencer.”) 

“Peanuts are peanuts, that’s all there’s to it,” he re- 
turned. 

“Then why are you excited? How can we hurt you if 
we are only peanuts?” 

He made no answer. 

“We don’t steal the trade we’re getting, do we? If the 
American people prefer to buy our product they probably 
like it.” 

“Oh, chuck your big words, Levinsky. You fellows are 
killing the trade, and you know it.” 

He laughed, but what I said was true. The old cloak- 
manufacturers, the German Jews, were merely merchants. 
Our people, on the other hand, were mostly tailors or 
cloak operators who had learned the mechanical part of the 
industry, and they were introducing a thousand innova- 
tions into it, perfecting, revolutionizing it. We brought to 
our work a Imowledge, a taste, and an ardor which the men 
of the old firms did not possess. And we were shedding 
our uncouthness, too. In proportion as we grew we adapted 
American business ways. 

Speaking in a semi-amicable vein, Loeb went on citing 
cases of what he termed cutthroat competition on our part, 
till he worked himself into a passion and became abusive 
again. The drift of his harangue was that “smashing” 
prices was something distasteM to the American spirit, 
that we were only foreigners, products of an inferior civil- 
ization, and that we ought to know our place 

“This way of doing business may be all right in Russia, 
but it won’t do in this country,” he said. “I tell you, it 
won’t do.” 


374 


MATRIMONY 


“But it does do. So it seems.” 

As he continued to fume and rail at us, and I sat listen- 
ing with a bored air, an idea flashed upon my mind, and, 
acting upon it on the spur of the moment, I suddenly laid 
a friendly hand on his arm. 

“Look here, Loeb,” I said. “What’s the use being ex- 
cited? I have a scheme. What’s the matter with you 
selling goods for me?” 

He was taken aback, but I could see that he was going to 
accept it. 

“What do you mean?” he asked, flushing. 

“ I mean what I say. I want you to come with me. You 
will make more money than you have ever made before. 
You’re a first-rate salesman, Loeb, and — well, it will pay 
you to make the change. What do you say?” 

He contemplated the floor for a minute or two, and then, 
looking up awkwardly, he said: 

“I’ll think it over. But you’re a smart fellow, Levinsky. 
I can tell you that.” 

We proceeded to discuss details, and I received his 
answer — a favorable one — ^before we left otu* seats. 

To celebrate the event I had him dine with me that 
evening, our pledges of mutual loyalty being solemnized 
by a toast which we drank in the costliest champagne the 
hotel restaurant could furnish. 

It was not a year and a half after this episode that 
Chaikin entered my employ as designer. 


CHAPTER VI 


I SAW other girls with a view to marriage, bur I was 
“too particular,” as my friends, the Nodelmans, would 
have it. I had two narrow escapes from breach-of-promise 
suits. 

“He has too much education,” Nodelman once said to 
his wife in my presence. “Too much in his head, don’t 
you know. You think too much, Levinsky. That’s what’s 
the matter. First marry, and do your thinking afterward. 
If you stopped to think before eating you would starve to 
death, wouldn’t you? Well, and if you keep on thinking 
and figuring if this girl’s nose is nice enough and if that 
girl’s eyes are nice enough, you’ll die before you get mar- 
ried, and there are no weddings among the dead, you 
know.” 

My matrimonial aspirations made themselves felt with 
fits and starts. There were periods when I seemed to be 
completely in their grip, when I was restless and as though 
ready to marry the first girl I met. Then there would be 
many months during which I was utterly indifferent, en- 
joying my freedom and putting off the question indefinitely. 

Year after year slid by. When my thirty-ninth birth- 
day became a thing of the past and I saw myself entering 
upon my fortieth year without knowing who I worked for I 
was in something like a state of despair. When I was a boy 
forty years had seemed to be the beginning of old age. 
This notion I now repudiated as ridiculous, for I felt as 
yotmg as I had done ten, fifteen, or twenty years before; 
and yet the words “forty years” appalled me. The wish 
to “settle down” then grew into a passion in me. The 
vague portrait of a woman in the abstract seemed never to 
be absent from my mind. Coupled with that portrait was 
a similarly vague image of a window and a table set for 
dinner. That, somehow, was my symbol of home. Home 

376 


MATRIMONY 


and woman were one, a complex charm joining them into 
an inseparable force. There was the glamour of sex, 
shelter, and companionship in that charm, and of something 
else that promised security and perpetuity to the successes 
that fate was pouring into my lap. It whispered of a 
future that was to continue after I was gone. 

My loneliness often took on the pungence of acute 
physical discomfort. The more I achieved, the more pain- 
ful was my self-pity. 

Nothing seemed to matter unless it was sanctified by 
marriage, and marriage now mattered far more than love. 

Girls had acquired a new meaning. They were not 
merely girls. They were matrimonial possibilities. 

Odd as it may appear, my romantic ideals of twenty 
years ago now reasserted their claim upon me. It was my 
ambition to marry into some orthodox family, well-to-do, 
well connected, and with an atmosphere of Talmudic edu- 
cation — ^the kind of match of which I had dreamed before 
my mother died, with such modifications as the American 
environment rendered natural. 

There were two distinct circumstances to accoimt for 
this new mood in me. 

In the first place, my sense of approaching middle age 
somehow rekindled my yearning interest in the scenes of my 
childhood and boyhood. Memories of bygone days had 
become ineffably dear to me. I seem^ to remember 
things of my boyhood more vividly than I did things that 
had happened only a year before. 

I was homesick for Antomir again. 

To revisit Abner’s Court or the Preacher’s Synagogue, 
to speak to Reb Sender, or to the bewhiskered old soldier, 
the skeepskin tailor, if they were still living, was one of my 
day-dreams. 

Eliakim Zunzer, the famous wedding-bard whose songs 
my mother used to sing in her dear, sonorous contralto, 
had emigrated to America several years before and I had 
heard of it at the time of his arrival, yet I had never thought 
of going to see him. Now, however, I could not rest until I 
looked him up. It appeared that he owned a small printing- 
shop in a basement on East Broadway, so I called at his 
place one afternoon on the pretext of ordering some cards. 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 

When I saw the poet — ^an aged little man with a tragic, 
tired look on a cadaverous face — I was so unstmng that 
when a young man in the shop asked me something about 
the cards, he had to repeat the question before I under- 
stood it. 

“My mother used to sing your beautiful songs, Mr. 
Zunzer,” I said to the poet some minutes later, my heart 
beating violently again. 

“ Did she? Where do you come from?” he asked, with a 
smile that banished the tired look, but deepened the tragic 
sadness of his death-like countenance. 

Everything bearing the name of my native place touched 
a tender spot in my heart. It was enough for a cloak- 
maker to ask me for a job with the Antomir accent to be 
favorably recommended to one of my foremen. A number 
of the men who received special consideration and were 
kept working in my shop in the slack seasons, when my 
force was greatly reduced, were fellow-townspeople of mine. 
This had been going on for several years, in fact, till 
gradually an Antomir atmosphere had been established in 
my shop, and something like a family spirit of which I was 
proud. We had formed a Levinsky Antomir Benefit So- 
ciety of which I was an honorary member and which was 
made up, for the most part, of my own employees. 

All this, I confess, was not without advantage to my 
business interests, for it afforded me a low average of wages 
and safeguarded my shop against labor troubles. The 
Cloak-makers’ Union had again come into existence, and, 
although it had no real power over the men, the trade was 
not free from sporadic conflicts in individual shops. My 
place, however, was absolutely immune from difficulties of 
this sort — aU because of the Levinsky Antomir Benefit 
Society. 

If one of my operatives happened to have a relative in 
Antomir, a women’s tailor who wished to emigrate to 
America, I would advance him the passage money, with the 
understanding that he was to work off the loan in my 
employ. That the “green one” was to work for low 
wages was a matter of course. But then, in justice to 
myself, I must add that I did my men favors in numerous 
cases that coidd in no way redound to my benefit. Be- 
sides, the fiscal advantages that I did derive from the 

378 


MATRIMONY 


Antomir spirit of my shop really were not a primary con- 
sideration with me. I sincerely cherished that spirit for 
its own sake. Moreover, if my Antomir employees were 
willing to accept from me lower pay than they might have 
received in other places, their average earnings were 
actually higher than they would have been elsewhere. I 
gave them steady work. Besides, they felt perfectly at 
home in my shop. I treated them well. I was very 
democratic. 

Compared to the thoughts of home that had oppressed 
me during my first months in America, my new visions of 
Antomir were like the wistful lights of a sunset as com- 
pared with the glare of midday. But then sunsets produce 
deeper, if quieter, effects on the emotions than the strongest 
daylight. 

It was my new homesickness, then, which inclined me 
to an American form of the kind of marriage of which I 
used to dream in the days of my Talmudic studies. An- 
other motive that led me to matrimonial aspirations of 
this kind lay in my new ideas of respectability as a necessary 
accompaniment to success. Marrying into a well-to-do 
orthodox family meant respectability and solidity. It 
implied law and order, the antithesis of anarchism, socialism, 
trade-unionism, strikes. 

I was a convinced free-thinker. Spencer’s Unknowable 
had irrevocably replaced my God. Yet religion now ap- 
pealed to me as an indispensable instrument in the great 
orchestra of things. From what I had seen of the world, or 
read about it in the daily press, I was convinced that but 
few people of wealth and power had real religion in their 
hearts. I felt sure that most of them looked upon churches 
or synagogues as they did upon police-courts; that they 
valued them primarily as safeguards of law and order and 
correctness, and this had become my attitude. For the 
rest, I felt that a vast number of the people who professed 
Christianity or Judaism did so merely because to declare 
oneself an atheist was not a prudent thing to do from a 
business or social point of view, or that they were in doubt 
and chose to be on the safe side of it, lest there shotdd 
be a God, “after all,” while millions of other people were 
not interested enough even to doubt, or to ask questions, 
and were content to do as everybody did. But there were 

379 


THE RISE OF D A VI D L E VI N S K Y 

some who did ask questions and did dare to declare them- 
selves atheists. I was one of these, and yet I looked upon 
religion as a most important institution, and was willing 
to contribute to its support. 

My business life had fostered the conviction in me that, 
outside of the family, the human world was as brutally 
selfish as the jungle, and that it was worm-eaten with 
hypocrisy into the bargain. From time to time the 
newspapers published sensational revelations concerning 
some pillar of society who had turned out to be a common 
thief on an uncommon scale. I saw that political speeches, 
sermons, and editorials had, with very few exceptions, no 
more sincerity in them than the rhetoric of an advertise- 
ment. I saw that Americans who boasted descent from 
the heroes of the Revolution boasted, in the same breath, 
of having spent an evening with Lord So-and-so; that 
it was their avowed ambition to acquire for their daughters 
the very titles which their ancestors had fought to banish 
from the life of their country. I saw that civilization was 
honeycombed with what Max Nordau called conventional 
lies, with sham ecstasy, sham sympathy, sham smiles, sham 
laughter. 

The riot of prosperity introduced the fashion of respect- 
able women covering their faces with powder and paint 
in a way that had hitherto been peculiar to women of the 
streets, so I pictured civilization as a harlot with cheeks, 
lips, and eyelashes of artificial beauty. I imagined moun- 
tains of powder and paint, a deafening chorus of affected 
laughter, a huge heart, as large as a city, full of falsehood 
and mischief. 

The leaders of the Jewish socialists, who were also at the 
head of the Jewish labor movement, seemed to me to be 
the most repulsive hypocrites of all. I loathed them. 

I had no creed. I knew of no ideals. The only thing I 
believed in was the cold, drab theory of the struggle for 
existence and the survival of the fittest. This could not 
satisfy a heart that was hungry for enthusiasm and affec- 
tion, so dreams of family life became my religion. Self- 
sacrificing devotion to one’s family was the only kind of 
altruism and idealism I did not fiout. 

I was worth over a million, and my profits had reached 
enormous dimensions, so I was regarded a most desirable 
380 


MATRIMONY 

match, and match-makers pestered me as much as I would 
let them, but they found me a hard man to suit. 

There was a homesick young man in my shop, a native 
of Antomir, with whom I often chatted of our common birth- 
place. His name was Mirmelstein. He was a little fellow 
with a massive head and a neck that seemed to be too slen- 
der to support it. I liked his face for its honest, ingenuous 
expression, but more especially because I thought his eyes 
had a homesick look in them. He was a poor mechanic, 
but I found him a steady job in my shipping department. 

He could furnish me no information about Reb Sender, 
of whom he had never heard before; he knew of the Min- 
sker family, of course, and he told me that Shiphrah, Ma- 
tilda’s mother, was dead; that Yeffim, Matilda’s brother, 
had been sent to Siberia some three years before for com- 
plicity in the revolutionary movement, and that Matilda 
herself had had a hair-breadth escape from arrest and was 
living in Switzerland. 

He wrote to Antomir, and a few weeks later he brought 
me the sad information that Reb Sender had been dead 
for several years, and that his wife had married again. 


CHAPTER VII 


NE day in November less than six months after I 
had learned of Yeffim Minsker’s arrest and of Ma- 



tilda’s escape, as I was making the rounds of my several 
departments, little Mirmelstein accosted me timidly. 

“Yeffim Minsker and his sister are here,” he said, with 
the smile of one breaking an interesting surprise. 

I paused, flushing. I feigned indifference and preoccu- 
pation, but the next moment I cast off all pretense. 

“Are they really?” I asked. 

He produced a clipping from a socialist Yiddish daily 
containing an advertisement of a public meeting to be held 
at Cooper Institute under the auspices of an organization 
of Russian revolutionists for the purpose of welcoming 
Yeffim and another man, a Doctor Gorsky, both of whom 
had recently escaped from Siberia. The revolutionary 
movement was then at its height in Russia, and the Jews 
were among its foremost and bravest leaders (which, by 
the way, accounts for the anti- Jewish riots and massacres 
which the Government inspired and encotu*aged quite 
openly). As was mentioned in an early chapter of this 
book, the then Minister of the Interior was the same man 
who had been Director of Police over the whole empire at 
the time of the anti- Jewish riots which followed the as- 
sassination of Czar Alexander II. in 1 88 1, and which started 
the great emigration of Jews to America. From time to 
time some distinguished revolutionist would be sent to 
America for subscriptions to the cause. This was the mis- 
sion of Doctor Gorsky and Yeffim. They Were here, not as 
immigrants, but merely to raise funds for the movement 
at home. 

As for Matilda, it appeared that Doctor Gorsky was her 
husband. Whether he had married her in Russia, before 
his arrest, or in Switzerland, where he and her brother had 


382 


MATRIMONY 


spent some time after their escape from exile, Mirmelstein 
could not tell me. Matilda’s name was not mentioned in 
the advertisement, but my shipping-clerk had heard of her 
arrival and marriage from some Antomir people. 

I co^d scarcely do anything that day. I was in a fever 
of excitement. “Do I still love her?” I wondered. 

I made up my mind to attend the Cooper Institute 
meeting. It was a bold venture, for the crowd was sure to 
contain some socialist cloak-makers who held me in any- 
thing but esteem. But then I had not had a strike in my 
shop for several years, and it did not seem likely that they 
would offer me an insult. Anyhow, the temptation to see 
Matilda was too strong. I had to go. She was certain to 
be on the platform, and all I wanted was to take a look at 
her from the auditorium. “And who knows but I may 
have a chance to speak to her, too,” I thought. 

It was a cold evening in the latter part of November. 
I went to the meeting in my expensive fur coat (although 
fur coats were still a rare spectacle in the streets), with a 
secret foretaste of the impression my prosperity would make 
upon Matilda. It was a fatal mistake. 

It was twenty minutes to 8 when I reached the front 
door of the historical meeting-haU, but it was already 
crowded to overflowing, and the policemen guarding the 
brightly illuminated entrance turned me away with a 
crowd of others. I was in despair. I tried again, and this 
time, apparently owing to my mink coat, I was admitted. 
Every seat in the vast underground auditorium was oc- 
cupied. But few people were allowed to stand, in the rear 
of the haU, and I was one of them. From the chat I over- 
heard around me I gathered that there were scores of men 
and women in the audience who had been in the thick of 
sensational conflicts in the great crusade for liberty that 
was then going on in Russia. I questioned a man who stood 
beside me about Doctor Gorsky, and from his answers I 
gained the impression that Matilda’s husband was con- 
sidered one of the pluckiest men in the struggle. At the 
time of his arrest he was practising medicine. 

Ranged on the platform on either side of the speaker’s 
desk were about a hundred chairs, several of which in the 
two front rows were kept vacant. Presently there was a 
stir on the platform. A group of men and women made 

383 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 


their appearance and seated themselves on the unoccu- 
pied chairs. They were greeted with passionate cheers 
and applause. 

One of them was Matilda. I recognized her at once. 
Her curly brown hair was gray at the temples, and her 
oval little face was somewhat bloated, and she was stouter 
than she had been twenty-one years before; but all this was 
merely like a new dress. Had I met her in the street, I 
might have merely felt that she looked familiar to me, 
without being able to trace her. As it was, she was strik- 
ingly the same as I had known her, though not precisely 
the same as I had pictured her, of late years, at least. 
Some errors had stolen into my image of her, and now, 
that I saw her in the flesh, I recalled her likeness of twenty- 
one years before, and she now looked precisely as she had 
done then. She was as interesting as ever. I was in such 
a turmoil that I scarcely knew what was happening on the 
platform. Did I still love her, or was it merely the excite- 
ment of beholding a living memory of my youth? One 
thing was certain — ^the feeling of reverence- and awe with 
, which I had once been wont to view her and her parents 
was stirring in my heart again. For the moment I did not 
seem to be the man who owned a big cloak-factory and was 
worth over a million American dollars. 

The chairman had been speaking for some time before 
I became aware of his existence. As his address was in 
Russian and I had long since unlearned what little I had 
ever known of that language, his words were Greek to me. 

Matilda was flanked by two men, both with full beards, 
one fair and the other rather dark. The one of the fair 
complexion and beard was Yeffim, although I recognized 
him by his resemblance to Matilda and more especiSly to 
her father, rather than by his image of twenty-one years ago. 
I supposed that the man on the other side of her, the one 
with the dark beard, was her husband, and I asked the man 
by my side about it, but he did not know. 

Several speakers made brief addresses of welcome. One 
of these spoke in Yiddish and one in English, so I understood 
them. They dealt with the revolution and the anti-Semitic 
atrocities, and paid glowing tributes to the new-comers. 
They were interrupted by outburst after outburst of en- 
thusiasm and indignation. When finally Doctor Gorsky 

384 


MATRIMONY 


was introduced (it was the man with the dark beard) there 
was a veritable pandemonium of applause, cheers, and 
ejaculations that lasted many minutes. He spoke in 
Russian and he seemed to be a poor speaker. I searched 
his face for evidence of valor and strength, but did not seem 
to find any. I thought it was rather a weak face — ^weak 
and kindly and girlish-looking. His beard, which was 
long and thin, did not become him. I asked myself 
whether I' was jealous of him, and the question seemed so 
incongruous, so remote. He made a good impression on 
me. The fact that this man, who was possessed of in- 
domitable courage, had a weak, good-natmed face interested 
me greatly, and the fact that he had gone through much 
suffering made a strong appeal to my sympathies (some- 
how his martyrdom was linked in my mind to his futility 
as a speaker). I warmed to him. 

He was followed by Yeffim, and the scene of wild en- 
thusiasm was repeated. 

When Minsker had finished the chairman declared the 
meeting closed. There was a rush for the platform. 
It was quite high above the auditorium floor; unless one 
reached it by way of the committee-room, which was a 
considerable distance to the right, it had to be mounted, 
not without an effort, by means of the chairs in the press 
inclosure. After some hesitation I made a dash for one 
of these chairs, and the next minute I was within three or 
four feet from Matilda, but with an excited crowd between 
us. Everybody wanted to shake hands with the heroes. 
The jam and scramble were so great that Doctor Gorsky, 
Yeffim, and Matilda had to extricate themselves and to 
escape into the spacious committee-room in the rear of the 
platform. 

Some minutes later I stood by her side in that room, 
amid a cluster of revolutionists, her husband and Yeffim 
being each the center of another crowd in the same room. 

“I beg your pardon,” I began, with a sheepish smile. 
*‘Do you know me?” 

Her glittering brown eyes fixed me with a curious look. 

“My name is David Levinsky,” I added. “ ‘ Dovid,’ the 
Talmudic student to whom you gave money with which to 
go to America.” 

“ Of course I know you,” she snapped, taking stock of my 

385 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 


mink overcoat. “And I have heard about you, too. You 
have a lot of money, haven’t you? I see you are wearing a 
costly fur coat.” And she brutally turned to speak to 
somebody else. 

My heart stood still. I wanted to say something, to 
assure her that I was not so black as the socialists painted 
me. I had an impulse to offer her a generous contribution 
to the cause, but I had not the courage to open my mouth 
again. The bystanders were eying me with glances that 
seemed to say, “The idea of a fellow like this being here!” 
I was a despicable ''bourgeois,'' a “capitalist” of the kind 
whose presence at a socialist meeting was a sacrilege. 

I slimk out of the room feeling like a whipped cm*. 
“Why, she is a perfect savage!” I thought. “But then 
what else can you expect of a socialist?” 

I thought of the scenes that had passed between her and 
myself in her mother’s house and I sneered. “A socialist, 
a good, pure soul, indeed!” I mused, gloatingly. “That’s 
exactly hke them. A bunch of hypocrites, that’s aU they 
are.” 

At the same time I was nagging myself for having had 
so little sense as to sport my prosperity before a socialist, 
of all the people in the world. 

A few days later the episode seemed to have occurred 
many years before. It did not bother me. Nor did Ma- 
tilda, 


CHAPTER VIII 


I T was an afternoon in April. My chief bookkeeper, one 
of my stenographers, Bender, and myself were hard at 
work at my Broadway factory amid a mnffled turmoil of 
industry. There were important questions of credit to 
dispose of and letters to answer. I was taking up account 
after account, weighing my data with the utmost care, 
giving every detail my closest attention. And all the while 
I was thus absorbed, seemingly cbilvious to everything 
else, I was alive to the fact that it was Passover and the 
eve of the anniversary of my mother’s death ; that three or 
four hours later I should be solemnizing her memorial day 
at the new Synagogue of the Sons of Aritomir; that while 
there I should sit next to Mr. Kaplan, a venerable-looking 
man to whose daughter I had recently become engaged, 
and that after the service I was to accompany Mr. Kaplan 
to his house and spend the evening in the bosom of his 
family, by the side of the girl that was soon to become my 
wife. My consciousness of all this grew keener every 
minute, tiU it began to interfere with my work. I was 
getting fidgety. Finally I broke off in the middle of a sen- 
tence. 

I washed myself, combed my plentiful crop of dark hair, 
carefully brushed myself, and put on my spring overcoat 
and derby hat — ^both of a dark-brown hue. 

“I sha’n’t be back until the day after to-morrow,” I 
announced to Bender, after giving him some orders. 

“TiU day after to-morrow!” he said, with reproachful 
amazement. 

I nodded. 

“Can’t you put it off? This is no time for being away,” 
lie grumbled. 

“It can’t be helped.” 

“You’re not going out of town, are you?” 

387 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 


‘ ‘ What difference does it make ? ’ ’ After a pause I added : 
“It isn’t on business. It’s a private matter.” 

“Oh!” he uttered, with evident relief. Nothing hurt his 
pride more than to suspect me of having business secrets 
from him. 

He was a married man now, having, less than a year 
ago, wedded a sweet little girl, a cousin, who was as simple- 
hearted and simple-minded as himself, and to whom he 
had practically been engaged since boyhood. His salary 
was one hundred and twenty-five dollars a week now. I 
was at home in their well-ordered little establishment, the 
sunshine that filled it having given an added impulse to 
my matrimonial aspirations. 

I betook myself to the new Antomir Synagogue. The 
congregation had greatly grown in prosperity and had 
recently moved from the ramshackle little frame building 
that had been its home into an impressive granite struc- 
ture, formerly a Presbyterian church. This was my fiirst 
visit to the building. Indeed, I had not seen the inside of 
its predecessor, the little old house of prayer that had 
borne the name of my native town, years before it was 
abandoned. In former years, even some time after I had 
become a convinced free-thinker, I had visited it at least 
twice a year — on my two memorial days — that is, on the 
anniversaries of the death of my parents. I had not done 
so since I had read Spencer. This time, however, the an- 
niversary of my mother’s death had a peculiar meaning 
for me. Vaguely as a result of my new mood, and dis- 
tinctly as a result of my betrothal, I was lured to the syna- 
gogue by a force against which my Spencerian agnosticism 
was powerless. 

I found the interior of the building brilliantly illuminated. 
The woodwork of the “stand” and the bible platform, the 
velvet-and-gold ciutains of the Holy Ark, and the fresco 
paintings on the walls and ceiling were screamingly new 
and gaudy. So were the ornamental electric fixtures. 
Altogether the place reminded me of a reformed German 
synagogue rather than of the kind with which my idea of 
Judaism had always been identified. This seemed to accen- 
tuate the fact that the building had until recently been a 
Christian church. The glaring electric lights and the glit- 
tering decorations struck me as something unholy. Still, 

388 


MATRIMONY 


the scattered handful of worshipers I found there, and 
more particularly the beadle, looked orthodox enough, and 
I gradually became reconciled to the place as a house of God. 

The beadle was a new incumbent. Better dressed and 
with more authority in his appearance than the man who 
had superintended the old place, he comported well with 
the look of things in the new synagogue. After obse- 
quiously directing me to the pew of my prospective father- 
in-law, who had not yet arrived, he inserted a stout, tall 
candle into one of the sockets of the “stand ” and lit it. It 
was mine. It was to bum uninterraptedly for my mother’s 
soul for the next twenty-four hours. Mr. Kaplan’s pew 
was in a place of honor — ^that is, by the east waU, near the 
Holy Ark. To see my memorial candle I had to take a 
few steps back. I did so, and as I watched its flame mem- 
ories and images took possession of me that turned my 
present life into a dream and my Russian past into reality. 
According to the Talmud there is a close affinity between 
the human soul and light, for “the spirit of man is the lamp 
of God,” as Solomon puts it in his Parables. Hence the 
custom of lighting canoes or lamps for the dead. And so, 
as I gazed at that huge candle commemorating the day when 
my mother gave her life for me, I felt as though its light 
was part of her spirit. The gentle flutter of its flame 
seemed to be speaking in the sacred whisper of a grave- 
yard. 

“Mother dear! Mother dear!” my heart was sa3ring. 
And then: “Thank God, mother dear! I own a large fac- 
tory. I am a rich man and I am going to be married to the 
daughter of a fine Jew, a man of substance and Talmud. 
And the family comes from around Antomir, too. Ah, 
if you were here to escort me to the wedding canopy!” 

The number of worshipers was slowly increasing. An 
old woman made her appearance in the gallery reserved for 
her sex. At last Mr. Kaplan, the father of my fiancee, 
entered the synagogue — a man of sixty, with a gray pa- 
triarchal beard and a general appearance that bespoke 
Talmudic scholarship and prosperity. He was a native of 
a small town near Antomir, where his father had been 
rabbi, and was now a retired flour merchant, having come 
to America in the seventies. He had always been one of 
the pillars of the Synagogue of the Sons of Antomir. In 

389 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 

the days when I was a frequenter at the old house of 
prayer the social chasm between him and myself was so 
wide that the notion of my being engaged to a daughter 
of his would have seemed absurd. Which, by the way, 
was one of the attractions that his house now had for me. 

“Good holiday, Mr. Kaplan!” some of the othet wor- 
shipers saluted him, as he made his way toward his pew. 

“Good holiday! Good holiday!” he responded, with 
dignified geniality, 

I could see that he was aware of my presence but care- 
fully avoided looking at me until he should be near enough 
for me to greet him. He was a kindly, serious-minded man, 
sincerely devout, and not over-bright. He had his little 
vanities and I was willing to humor them. 

“Good holiday, Mr. Kaplan!” I called out to him. 

“Good holiday! Good holiday, David!” he returned, 
amiably. “Here already? Ahead of me? That’s good! 
Just follow the path of Judaism and ever3rthing will be all 
right.” 

“How’s everybody?” I asked. 

“All are well, thank God.” 

“How’s Fanny?” 

“Now you’re talking. That’s the real question, isn’t 
it?” he chaffed me, with dignity. “ She’s well, thank God.” 

He introduced me to the cantor — a pug-nosed man with 
a pale face and a skimpy little beard of a brownish hue. 

“Our new cantor, the celebrated Jacob Goldstein!” he 
said. “And this is Mr. David Levinsky, my intended son- 
in-law. An Antomir man. Was a fine scholar over there 
and still remembers a lot of Talmud.” 

The newly arrived synagogue tenor was really a cele- 
brated man, in the Antomir section of Russia, at least. His 
coming had been conceived as a sensational feature of the 
opening of the new synagogue. While “town cantor” in 
Antomir he had received the highest salary ever paid there. 
The contract that had induced him to come over to America 
pledged him nearly five times as much. Thus the New 
York Sons of Antomir were not only able to parade a famous 
cantor before the multitude of other New York congrega- 
tions, but also to prove to the people at home that they 
were the financial superiors of the whole town of their 
birth. So far, however, as the New York end of the sen- 

390 


MATRIMONY 


sation was concerned, there was a good-sized bee in the 
honey. The imported cantor was a tragic disappoint- 
ment. The trouble was that his New York audiences were 
far more critical and exacting than the people in Antomir, 
and he was not up to their standard. For one thing, many 
of the Sons of Antomir, and others who came to their 
synagogue to hear the new singer, people who had mostly 
lived in poverty and ignorance at home, now had a piano 
or a violin in the house, with a son or a daughter to play it, 
and had become frequenters of the Metropolitan Opera 
House or the Carnegie Music Hall; for another, the New 
York Ghetto was full of good concerts and all other sorts 
of musical entertainments, so much so that good music 
had become all but part of the daily life of the Jewish tene- 
ment population; for a third, the audiences of the imported 
'Cantor included people who had lived in much larger 
Etuopean cities than Antomir, in such places as Warsaw, 
Odessa, Lemberg, or Vienna, for example, where they had 
heard much better cantors than Goldstein. Then, too, life in 
New York had Americanized my fellow-townspeople, mod- 
ernized their tastes, broadened them out. As a conse- 
quence, the methods of the man who had won the admira- 
tion of their native town seepied to them old-fashioned, 
crude, droll. 

Still, the trustees, and several others who were respon- 
sible for the coming of the pug-nosed singer, persisted in 
speaking of him as “a greater tenor than Jean de Rezske,” 
and my prospective father-in-law was a trustee, and a good- 
natured man to boot, so he had compassion for him. 

“In the old country when we meet a new-comer we only 
say, ‘Peace to you,’” I remarked to the cantor, gaily. 
“Here we say this and something else, besides. We ask 
him how he likes America.” 

“But I have not yet seen it,” the cantor returned, with 
a broad smile in which his pug nose seemed to grow in size. 

I told him the threadbare joke of American newspaper re- 
porters boarding an incoming steamer at Sandy Hook and 
asking some European celebrity how he likes America hours 
before he has set foot on its sod. 

“That’s what we call ‘hurry up,”’ Kaplan remarked. 

“That means quick, doesn’t it?” the cantor asked, with 
another broad snule. 

395: 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 

“You’re picking up English rather fast,’’ I jested. 

“He has not only a fine voice, but a fine head, too,” 
Kaplan put in. 

“I know what ' all right ’ means, too,” the cantor laughed. 

I thought there was servility in his laugh, and I ascribed 
it to the lukewarm reception with which he had met. I 
was touched. We talked of Antomir, and although a con- 
versation of this kind was nothing new to me, yet what he 
said of the streets, market-places, the bridge, the syna- 
gogues, and of some of the people of the town interested me 
inexpressibly. 

Presently the service was begun — not by the imported 
singer, but by an amateur from among the worshipers, the 
service on a Passover evening not being considered im- 
portant enough to be conducted by a professional cantor 
of consequence. 

My heart was all in Antomir, in the good old Antomir of 
synagogues and Talmud scholars and old-fashioned mar- 
riages, not of college students, revolutionists, and Matildas. 

When the service was over I stepped up dose to the 
Holy Ark and recited the Prayer for the Dead, in chorus 
with several other men and boys. As I cast a glance at my 
“memorial candle” my mother loomed saintly through its 
flame. I beheld myself in her arms, a boy of four, on our 
way to the synagogue, where I was to be taught to parrot 
the very words that I was now saying for her spirit. 

The Prayer for the Dead was at an end. “A good 
holiday! A merry holiday!” rang on all sides, as the 
slender crowd streamed chatteringly toward the door. 

Mr. Kaplan, the cantor, and several other men, cluster- 
ing together, lingered to bandy reminiscences of Antomir, 
interspersing them with “bits of law.” 


CHAPTER IX 


T he Kaplans occupied a large, old house on Henry 
Street, one that had been built at a period when the 
neighborhood was considered the best in the city. While 
Kaplan and I were taking off our overcoats in the broad, 
carpeted, rather dimly lighted haU, a dark-eyed girl ap- 
peared at the head of a steep stairway. 

“Hello, Dave! You’re a good boy,” she shouted, joy- 
ously, as she ran down to meet me with coquettish com- 
placency. 

She had regtdar features, and her face wore an expression 
of ease and self-satisfaction. Her dark eyes were large and 
pretty, and altogether she was rather good-looking. Indeed, 
there seemed to be no reason why she should not be de- 
cidedly pretty, but she was not. Perhaps it was because 
of that self-satisfied air of hers, the air of one whom nothing 
in the world could startle or stir. Temperamentally she 
reminded me somewhat of Miss Kalmanovitch, but she was 
the better-looking of the two. I was not in love with her, 
but she certainly was not repulsive to me. 

“Good holiday, dad! Good holiday, Dave!” she saluted 
us in Yiddish, throwing out her chest and sqmring her 
shoulders as she reached us. 

She was bom in New York and had graduated at a 
public grammar-school and English was the only language 
which she spoke like one bom to speak it, and yet her 
Yiddish greeting was precisely what it would have been 
had she been bom and bred in Antomir. 

Her “Good holiday, dad. Good holiday, Dave!” went 
straight to my heart. 

“Well, I’ve brought him to you, haven’t I?^ Are y<m 
pleased?” her father said, with affectionate grimness, in 
Yiddish. 

“Oh, you’re a dandy dad. You’re just sweet,” she re- 
26 393 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 

turned, in English, putting up her red lips as if he were her 
baby. And this, too, went to my heart. 

When her father had gone to have his shoes changed for 
.slippers and before her mother came down from her bed- 
room, where she was apparently dressing for supper, 
Fanny slipped her arm around me and I kissed her lips 
and eyes. 

A chuckle rang out somewhere near by. Standing in 
the doorway of the back parlor, Mefisto-like, was Mary, 
Fanny’s twelve-year-old sister. 

“Shame!” she said, gloatingly. 

“The nasty thing!” Fanny exclaimed, half gaily, half in 
. anger. 

“You’re nasty yourself,” returned Mary, making faces 
at her sister. 

“Shut up or I’ll knock your head off.” 

“Stop quarreling, Idds,” I intervened. Then, addressing 
myself to Mary, “Can you speU ‘eavesdropping’?” 

Mary laughed. 

“Never mind laughing,” I insisted. “Do you know 
what eavesdropping means? Is it a nice thing to do? 
Anyhow, when you’re as big as Fanny and you have a 
sweetheart, won’t you let him kiss you?” As I said this I 
took Fanny’s hand tenderly. 

“She has sweethearts already,” said Fanny. “She is 
running around with three boys.” 

“I ain’t,” Mary protested, pouting. 

“Well, three sweethearts means no sweetheart at all,” 
I remarked. 

Fanny and I went into the front parlor, a vast, high- 
ceiled room, as large as the average four-room flat in the 
“modem apartment-house” that had recently been com- 
pleted on the next block. It was drearily too large for the 
habits of the East Side of my time, depressingly out of 
keeping with its sense of home. It had lanky pink-and- 
gold furniture and a heavy bright carpet, aU of which had 
a forbidding effect. It was as though the chairs and the sofa 
had been placed there, not for use, but for storage. Nor 
was there enough furniture to give the room an air of being 
inhabited, the six pink-and-gold pieces and the marble- 
topped center-table losing themselves in spaces full of 
. gaudy desolation. 


394 


MATRIMONY 

“She’s awftd saucy,” said Fanny. 

I caught her in my arms. “ I have not three sweethearts. 
I have only one, and that’s a real one,” I cooed. 

“Only one? Really and truly?” she demanded, play- 
fully. She gathered me to her plump bosom, planting a 
deep, slow, sensuous kiss on my lips. 

I cast a side-glance to ascertain if Mary was not spying 
upon us. 

“ Don’t be uneasy,” Fanny whispered. “She won’t dare. 
We can kiss all we want.” 

I thought she was putting it in a rather matter-of-fact 
way, but I kissed her with passion, all the same. 

“Dearest! If you knew how happy I am,” I murmured. 

“Are you really? Oh, I don’t believe you,” she jested, 
self-sufficiently. “ You’re just pretending, that’s all. Let 
me kiss your sweet mouthie again.” 

She did, and then, breaking away at the sound of her 
mother’s lumbering steps, she threw out her bosom with 
an upward jerk, a trick she had which I disliked. 

Ten minutes later the whole family, myself included, 
were seated around a large oval table in the basement 
dining-room. Besides the members already known to the 
reader, there was Fanny’s mother, a corpulent woman with 
a fat, diabetic face and large, Hstless eyes, and Fanny’s 
brother, Rubie, a boy with intense features, one year 
younger than Mary. Rubie was the youngest of five chil- 
dren, the oldest two, daughters, being married. 

Mr. Kaplan was in his skuU-cap, while I wore my dark- 
brown derby. Everything in this house was strictly ortho- 
dox and as old-fashioned as the American environment 
would permit. 

That there was not a trace of leavened bread in the 
house, its place being taken by thin, flat, unleavened 
“matzos,” and that the repast included “matzo balls,” 
wine, mead, and other accessories of a Passover meal, is a 
matter of course. 

Mr. Kaplan was wrapped up in his family, and on this 
occasion, though he presided with conscious dignity, he 
was in one of his best domestic moods, talkative, and af- 
fectionately facetious. The children were the real masters 
of his house. 


395 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 

Watching his wife nag Rubie because he would not ac- 
cept another matzo ball, Mr. Kaplan said: 

“Don’t worry, Malkah. Your matzo balls are delicious, 
even if yoiu* ‘only son’ won’t do justice to them. Aren’t 
they, David?” 

“They certainly are,” I answered. “What is more, 
they have the genuine Antomir taste to them.” 

“Hear that, Fanny?” Mr. Kaplan said to my betrothed. 
“You had better learn to make matzo balls exactly like 
these. He likes everything that smeUs of Antomir, you 
know.” 

“That’s all right,” said Malkah. “Fanny is a good 
housekeeper. May I have as good a year.” 

“It’s a good thing you say it,” her husband jested. 
“Else David might brei the engagement.” 

“Let him,” said Fanny, with a jerk of her bosom and 
a theatrical glance at me. “I really don’t know how to 
make matzo balls, and Passover is nearly over, so there’s 
no time for mamma to show me how to do it.” 

“I’U do so next year,” her mother said, with an affec- 
tionate smile that landled life in her diabetic eyes. “The 
two of you will then have to pass Passover with us.” 

“I accept the invitation at once,” I said. 

“Provided you attend the seder, too,” remarked Kaplan, 
referring to the elaborate and pictiu-esque ceremony at- 
tending the first two suppers of the great festival. 

I had been expected to partake of those ceremonial re- 
pasts on the first and second nights of this Passover, but had 
been unavoidably kept away from the city. Kaplan had 
resented it, and even now, as he spoke of the next year’s 
seder, there was reproach in his voice. 

“I will, I wiU,” I said, ardently. 

“One mustn’t do business on a seder night. It isn’t 
right.” 

“Give it to him, pa!” Fanny cut in. 

“I am not joking,” Kaplan persisted. “One has got to 
be a Jew. Excuse me, David, for speaking like that, but 
you’re going to be as good as a son of mine and I have a 
right to talk to you in this way.” 

“Why, of course, you have!” I answered, with filial 
docility. 

His lecture bored me, but it did me good, too. It was 
396 


MATRIMONY 


sweet to hear myself called “as good as a son” by this man 
of Talmudic education who was at the same time a man of 
stjbstance and of excellent family. 

The chicken was served. My intended wife ate vora- 
ciously, biting lustily and chewing with gusto. The sight of 
it jarred on me somewhat, but I overfed myself. “It’s 
all right,” I thought. “She’s a healthy girl. She’ll make 
me a strong mate, and she’ll bear me healthy children.” 

I had a temptation to take her in my arms and kiss her. 
“I am not in love with her, and yet I am so happy,” I 
thought. “Oh, love isn’t essential to happiness. Not at 
all. Our old generation is right.” 

Fanny’s reading, which was only an occasional per- 
formance, was confined to the cheapest stories published. 
Even the popiilar novels of the day, the “best sellers,” 
seemed to be beyond her depth. Her intellectual range was 
not much wider than that of her old-fashioned mother, 
whose literary attainments were restricted to the reading 
of the Yiddish Commentary on the Pentateuch. She 
often interrupted me or her mother; everybody except her 
father. But all this seemed to be quite natural and 
fitting. “She is expected to be a wife, a mother, and a 
housekeeper,” I reflected, “and that she will know how to 
be. Everything else is nonsense. I don’t want to discuss 
Spencer with her, do I?” 

Kaplan quoted the opening words of a passage in the 
Talmud bearing upon piety as the btilwark of happiness. 
I took it up, finishing the passage for him. 

“See?” he said to his wife. “I have told you he re- 
members his Talmud pretty well, haven’t I?” 

“When a man has a good head he has a good head,” 
she returned, radiantly. 

Rubie went to a public school, but he spent three or four 
hours every afternoon at an old-fashioned Talmudic 
academy, or “yeshivah.” There were two such “yeshi- 
vahs” on the East Side, and they were attended by boys of 
the most orthodox families in the Ghetto. I had never met 
such boys before. That an American school-boy should 
read Talmud seemed a joke to me. I could not take 
Ruble’s holy studies seriously. As we now sat at the table 
I banteringly asked him about the last page he had read. 
He answered my question, and at his father’s command he 

397 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 

ran up-stairs, into the back parlor, where stood two huge 
bookcases filled with glittering folios of the Talmud and 
other volumes of holy lore, and came back with one con- 
taining the page he had named. 

“Find it and let David see what you can do," his father 
said. 

Rubie complied, reading the text and interpreting it in 
Yiddish precisely as I should have done when I was eleven 
years old. He even gesticulated and swayed backward and 
forward as I used to do. To complete the picture, his 
mother, watching him, beamed as my mother used to do 
when she watched me reading at the l^eacher’s Synagogue 
or at home in our wretched basement. I was deeply 
affected. 

“He’s all right!” I said. 

“He’s a loafer, just the same,” his father said, gaily. 
“If he had as much appetite for his Talmud as he has for 
his school-books he would really be all right.” 

“What do you want of him?” Malkah interceded. 
“ Doesn’t he work hard enough as it is? He hardly has an 
hour’s rest.” 

“There you have it! I didn’t speak respectfully enough 
of her ‘only son.’ I beg your pardon, Malkah,” Mr. 
Kaplan said, facetiously. 

The wedding had been set for one of the half-holidays 
included in the Feast of Tabernacles, about six months 
later. Mrs. Kaplan said something about her plans con- 
oerning the event. Fanny objected. Her mother insisted, 
and it looked like an altercation, when the head of the 
family called them to order. 

“And where are you going for your honeymoon, Fanny?” 
asked Mary. 

“That’s none of your business,” her sister retorted. 

“She’s stuck up because she’s going to be married,” 
Mary jeered. 

“Shut your mouth,” her father growled. 

“Do you know my idea of a honeymoon?” said I. 
“That is, if it were possible — if Russia didn’t have that 
accursed government of hers. We should take a trip to 
Antomir.” 

“Wouldn’t that be lovely!” said Fanny. “We would 
stop in Paris, wouldn’t we?” 

398 


MATRIMONY 


Fanny and her mother resumed their discussion of the* 
preparations for the wedding. I scarcely listened, yet 
I was thrilled. I gazed at Fanny, trying to picttu*e her as 
the mother of my first child. “If it’s a girl she’ll be named 
for mother, of course,” I mused. I reflected with morti- 
fication that my mother’s name could not be left in its 
original form, but would have to be Americanized, and for 
the moment this seemed to be a matter of the gravest con- 
cern to me. 

My attitude toward Fanny and our prospective marriage' 
was primitive enough, and yet oiu* engagement had an 
ennobling effect on me. I was in a lofty mood. My heart 
sang of motives higher than the mere feathering of my own 
nest. The vision of working for my wife and children 
somehow induced a yearning for altruism in a broader 
sense. While free from any vestige of religion, in the 
ordinary meaning of the word, I was tingling with a re- 
ligious ecstasy that was based on a sense of public duty. 
The Synagogue of the Sons of Antomir seemed to represent, 
not a creed, but tmselfishness. I donated generously to it. 
Also, I subscribed a liberal sum to an East Side hospital 
of which Kaplan was a member, and to other institutions. 
The sum I gave to the hospital was so large that it made a 
stir, and a conservative Yiddish daily printed my photo- 
graph and a short sketch of my life. I thought of the 
promise I had given Naphtali, before leaving Antomir, 
to send him a “ship ticket.” I had thought of it many 
times before, but I had never even sought to discover his 
whereabouts. This time, however, I throbbed with a. 
firm resolution to get his address, and, in case he was poor, 
to bring him over and liberally provide for his future. 

My wedding loomed as the beginning of a new era in 
my life. It appealed to my imagination as a new birth,, 
like my coming to America. I looked forward to it with 
mixed awe and bliss. 

Three or four months later, however, something happened 
that played havoc with that feeling. 



BOOK XII 
MISS TEVKIN 


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CHAPTER I 


O N a Saturday morning in August I took a train for 
Tannersville, Catskill Mountains, where the Kaplan 
family had a cottage. I was to stay with them over 
Sunday. I had been expected to be there the day before, 
but had been detained, Au^st being part of our busiest 
season. While in the smolang-car it came over me that 
from Kaplan’s point of view my journey was a flagrant 
violation of the Sabbath and that it was sure to make 
things awkward. Whether my riding on Saturday would 
actually offend his religious sensibilities or not (for in 
America one gets used to seeing such sins committed even 
by the faithful), it was certain to offend his sense of the 
respect I owed him. And so, to avoid a sullen reception 
I decided to stop overnight in another Catskill town and 
not to make my appearance at Tannersville until the 
following day. 

The insignificant change was pregnant with momentous 
results. 

It was lunch-time when I alighted from the train, amid 
a hubbub of gay voices. Women and children were greet- 
ing their husbands and fathers who had come from the city 
to join them for the week-end. I had never been to the 
mountains before, nor practically ever taken a day’s vaca- 
tion. It was so full of ozone, so full of health-giving balm, 
it was almost overpowering. I was inhaling it in deep, 
intoxicating gulps. It gave me a pleasure so keen it 
seemed to verge on pain. It was so unlike the air I had 
left in the sweltering city that the place seemed to belong 
to another planet. 

I stopped at the Rigi Kulm House. There were several 
other hotels or boarding-houses in the village, and all of 
them except one were occupied by our people, the Rigi 
Kulm being the largest and most expensive hostelry in the 

403 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 

neighborhood. It was crowded, and I had to content my- 
self with sleeping-accommodations in one of the near-by 
cottages, in which the hotel-keeper hired rooms for his over- 
flow business, taking my meals in the hotel. 

The Rigi Kuhn stood at the end of the village and my 
cottage was across the main country road from it. Both 
were on high ground. Viewed from the veranda of the 
hotel, the village lay to the right and the open country — a 
fascinating landscape of meadowland, timbered hills, and 
a brook that lost itself in a grove — to the left. The motin- ‘ 
tains rose in two ranges, one in front of the hotel and one 
in the rear. 

The bulk of the boarders at the Rigi Kulm was made up 
of families of cloak-manufacturers, shirt-manufacturers, 
ladies’-waist-manufacturers, cigar-manufacturers, clothiers, 
furriers, jewelers, leather-goods men, real-estate men, 
physicians, dentists, lawyers — ^in most cases people who 
had blossomed out into nabobs in the coiu-se of the last few 
years. The crowd was ablaze with diamonds, painted 
cheeks, and bright-colored silks. It was a babel of blatant 
self-consciousness, a miniature of the parvenu smugness 
that had spread like wild-fiie over the country after a period 
of need and low spirits. 

In addition to families who were there for the whole 
season — that is, from the Fourth of July to the first Monday 
in October — the hotel contained a considerable number of 
single yoimg people, of both sexes — salesmen, stenographers, 
bookkeepers, librarians — ^who came for a fortnight’s vaca- 
tion. These were known as “two-weekers.” They occu- 
pied tiny rooms, usually two girls or two men in a room. 
Each of these girls had a large supply of dresses and shirt- 
waists of the latest style, and altogetiier the two weeks’ va- 
cation ate up, in many cases, the savings of months. 

To be sure, the ‘‘two-weekers” of the gentle sex were not 
the only marriageable young women in the place. They 
had a number of heiresses to compete with. 

I was too conspicuous a figure in the needle industries 
for my name to be unknown to the guests of a hotel like 
the Rigi Kulm House. Moreover, several of the people I 
found there were my j^rsonal acquaintances. One of these 
was Nodelman’s cousin, Mrs. Kalch, or Auntie Yetta, the 
gaunt, childless woman of the solemn countenance and the 
404 


MISS TEVKIN 


gay disposition, of the huge gold teeth, and the fingers 
heavily laden with diamonds. I had not seen her for 
months. As the lessee of the hotel marched me into his 
great dining-room she rushed out to me, her teeth aglitter 
with hospitality, and made me take a seat at a table which 
she shared with her husband, the moving-van man, and 
two middle-aged women. I could see that she had not 
heard of my engagement, and to avoid awkward interroga- 
tions concerning the whereabouts of my fiancee I omitted 
to annoimce it. 

“I know what you have come here for,” she said, archly. 
“You can’t fool Auntie Yetta. But you have come to the 
right place. I can tell you that a larger assortment of 
beautiful young ladies you never saw, Mr. Levinsky. And 
they’re educated, too. If you don’t find your predestined 
one here you’ll never find her. What do you say, Mr. 
Rivesman?” she addressed the proprietor of the hotel, who 
stood by and whom I had known for many years. 

“ I agree with you thoroughly, Mrs. Kalch,” he answered, 
smilingly. “But Mr. Levinsl^ tells me he can stay only 
one day with us.” 

“Plenty of time for a smart man to pick a girl in a place 
like this. Besides, you just tell him that you have a lot 
of fine, educated young ladies, Mr. Rivesman. He is an 
educated gentleman, Mr. Levinsky is, and if he knows the 
kind of boarders you have he’ll stay longer.” 

“ I know Mr. Levinsky is an educated man,” Rivesman an- 
swered. “As for our boarders, they’re all fine — superfine.” 

“So you’ve got to find your predestined one here,” she 
resumed, turning to me again. “Otherwise you can’t 
leave this place. See?” 

“But suppose I have found her already — elsewhere?” 

“You had no business to. Anyhow, if she doesn’t know 
enough to hold you tight and you are here to spend a week- 
end with other girls, she does not deserve to have you.” 

“But I am not spending it with other girls.” 

' ‘ What else did you come here f or ? ” And she screwed up 
one-half of her face into a wink so grotesque that I could 
not help bursting into laughter. 

About an hour after lunch I sat in a rocking-chair on the 
front porch, gazing at the landscape. The sky was a blue 

405 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 

so subtle and so noble that it seemed as though I had never 
seen such a sky before. “This is just the kind of place 
for God to live in,” I mused. Whereupon I decided that 
this was what was meant by the word heaven, whereas the 
blue overhanging the city was a “mere sky.” The village 
was full of blinding, scorching sunshine, yet the air was 
entrancingly refreshing. The veranda was almost deserted, 
most of the women being in their rooms, gossiping or dress- 
ing for the arrival of their husbands, fathers, sweethearts, or 
possible sweethearts. Birds were embroidering the silence 
of the hour with a silvery whisper that spoke of rest and 
good-will. The slender brook to the left of me was droning 
like a bee. Everjrthing was charged with peace and sooth- 
ing mystery. A feeling of lassitude descended upon me. 
I was too lazy even to think, but the landscape was con- 
tinually forcing images on my mind. A hoUow in the 
slope of one of the mountains in front of me looked for all 
the world like a huge spoon. Half of it was dark, while the 
other half was full of golden light. It seemed as though it 
was the sun’s favorite spot. “The enchanted spot,” I 
named it. I tried to imagine that oval-shaped hollow at 
night. I visioned a company of ghosts tiptoeing their way 
to it and stealing a night’s lodging in the “spoon,” and 
later, at the approach of dawn, behold! the ghosts were 
fleeing to the woods near by. 

Rising behind that motintain was the timbered peak of 
another one. It looked like the fur cap of a monster, and 
I wondered what that monster was thinking of. 

When I gazed at the mountain directly opposite the hotel 
I had a feeling of disappointment. I knew that it was very 
high, that it took hours to climb it, but I failed to realize 
it. It was seemingly quite low and commonplace. Dark- 
ling at the foot of it was what looked like a moat choked 
with underbrush and weeds. The spot was about a mile 
and a half from the hotel, yet it seemed to be only a minute’s 
walk from me. But then a bird that was flying over that 
moat at the moment, winging its way straight across it, was 
apparently making no progress. Was this region exempt 
from the laws of space and distance? The bewitching 
azure of the sky and the divine taste of the air seemed to 
bear out a feeling that it was exempt from any law of 
nature with which I was familiar. The mountain-peak 


MISS TEVKIN 


directly opposite the hotel looked weird now. Was it 
peopled with Liliputians? 

Another bird made itself heard somewhere in the under- 
brush flanking the brook. It was saying something in 
querulous accents. I knew nothing of birds, and the song 
or call of this one sounded so queer to me that I was almost 
frightened. AU of which tended to enhance the uncanny 
majesty of the whole landscape. 

Presently I heard Mrs. Kalch calling to me. She was 
coming along the veranda, resplendent in a purple dress, 
a huge diamond breastpin, and huge diamond earrings. 

“All alone? AH alone?” she exclaimed, as she paused, 
interlocking her bediamonded fingers in a posture of mock 
amazement. “All alone? Aren’t you ashamed of your- 
self to sit moping out here, when there are so many pretty 
yoimg ladies around? Come along; I’ll find you one or two 
as sweet as sugar,” kissing the tips of her fingers. 

“Thank you, Mrs. Kalch, but I like it here.” 

“Mrs. Kalch! Auntie Yetta, you mean.” And the 
lumps of gold in her mouth glinted good-naturedly. 

“Very well. Auntie Yetta.” 

“That’s better. Wait! Wait’ll I come back.” 

She vanished. Presently she returned and, grabbing 
me by an arm, stood me up and convoyed me half-way 
aroimd the hotel to a secluded spot on the rear porch where 
four girls were chatting quietly. 

“Perhaps you’ll find your predestined one among these,” 
she said. 

“But I have found her already,” I protested, with ill- 
concealed annoyance. 

She took no heed of my words. After introducing me to 
two of the girls and causing them to introduce me to the 
other two, she said: 

“And now go for him, young ladies! You know who 
Mr. Levinsky is, don’t you? It isn’t some kike. It’s 
David Levinsky, the cloak-manufacturer. Don’t miss yoiu* 
chance. Try to catch him.” 

“I’m ready,” said Miss Lazar, a pretty brunette in 
white. 

“She’s all right,” declared Auntie Yetta. “Her tongue 
cuts like a knife that has just been sharpened, but she’s as 
good as gold.” 

407 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 

“Am I? I ain’t so sure about it. You had better look 
out, Mr. Levinsky,” the brunette in white warned me. 

“Why, that just makes it interesting,” I returned. 
“Danger is tempting, you know. How are you going to 
catch me — with a net or a trap?” 

Auntie Yetta interrupted us. “Fm off,” she said, rising 
to go. “I can safely leave you in their hands, Mr. Levinsky. 
They’ll take care of you,” she said, with a wink, as she 
departed. 

“You haven’t answered my question,” I said to Miss 
Lazar. 

“What was it?” 

“She has a poor memory, don’t you know,” laughed a 
girl in a yellow shirt-waist. She was not pretty, but 
she had winning blue eyes and her yellow waist became her. 
“Mr. Levinsky wants to know if you’re going to catch him 
with a net or with a trap.” 

“And how about yourself?” I demanded. “What sort 
of tools have you?” 

“Oh, I don’t think I have a chance with a big fish like 
yourself,” she replied. 

Her companions laughed. 

“Well, that’s only her way of fishing,” said Miss Lazar. 
“ She tells every fellow she has no chance with him. That’s 
her way of getting started. You’d better look out, Mr. 
Levinsky.” 

“And her way is to put on airs and look as if she could 
have anybody she wanted,” retorted the one of the blue 
eyes. 

“ Stop, girls,” said a third, who was also interesting. “ If 
we are going to give away one another’s secrets there’ll be 
no chance for any of us.” 

I could see that their thrusts contained more fact than 
fiction and more venom than gaiety, but it was all laughed 
off and everybody seemed to be on the best of terms wdth 
everybody else. I looked at this bevy of girls, each at- 
tractive in her way, and I became aware of the fact that I 
was not in the least tempted to flirt with them. “I am a 
well-behaved, sedate man now, and all because I am en- 
gaged,” I congratulated myself. “There is only one woman 
in the world for me, and that is Fanny, my Fanny, the girl 
that is going to be my wife in a few weeks from to-day.” 

408 


MISS TEVKIN 


Directly in front of us and only a few yards off was a 
tennis-court. It was unoccupied at first, but presently 
there appeared two girls with rackets and balls and they 
started to play. One of these arrested my attention 
violently, as it were. I thought her strikingly interesting 
and pretty. I could not help gazing at her in spite of the 
eyes that were watching me, and she was growing on me 
rapidly. It seemed as though absolutely everything about 
her made a strong appeal to me. She was tall and stately, 
with a fine pink complexion and an effective mass of chest- 
nut hair. I found that her face attested intellectual dig- 
nity and a kindly disposition. I liked her white, strong 
teeth. I liked the way she closed her lips and I liked the 
way she opened them into a smile; the way she ran to 
meet the ball and the way she betrayed disappointment 
when she missed it. I still seemed to be congratulating 
myself upon my indifference to women other than the one 
who was soon to bear my name, when I became conscious 
of a mighty interest in this girl. I said to myself that she 
looked refined from head to foot and that her movements 
had a peculiar rhythm that was irresistible. 

Physically her cast of features was scarcely prettier than 
Fanny’s, for my betrothed was really a good-looking girl, 
but spiritually there was a world of difference between 
their faces, the difference between a Greek statue and one 
of those lay figures that one used to see in front of cigar- 
stores. 

The other tennis-player was a short girl with a long face. 
I reflected that if she were a little taller or her face were not 
so long she might not be uninteresting, and that by contrast 
with her companion she looked homelier than she actually 
was. 

Miss Lazar watched me closely. 

“Pla3dng tennis is one way of fishing for fellows,” she 
remarked. 

“ So the racket is really a fishing-tackle in disguise, is it ?” 
I returned. “But where are the fellows?” 

“Aren’t you one?” 

“No.” 

“Oh, these two girls go in for highbrow fellows,” said a 
young woman who had hitherto contented herself with 
smiling and laughing. “They’re highbrow themselves.” , 
27 . 409 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 

“Do they use big words?” I asked. 

“Well, they’re well read. I’ll say that for them,” ob- 
served Miss Lazar, with a fine display of fairness. 

“College girls?” 

“Only one of them.” 

“Which?” 

“Guess.” 

“The tall one.” 

“ I thought she’d be the one you’d pick. You’ll have to 
:guess again.” 

“What made you think I’d pick her for a college girl?” 

“You’ll have to guess that, too. Well, she is an edu- 
‘Cated girl, all the same.” 

She volunteered the further information that the tall 
girl’s father was a writer, and, as though anxious lest I 
^should take him too seriously, she hastened to add:^ 

“He doesn’t write English, though. It’s Jewish, or 
Hebrew, or something.” 

“What’s his name?” I asked. 

“Tevkin,” she answered, under her breath. 

The name sounded remotely familiar to me. Had I 
seen it in some Yiddish paper? Had I heard it somewhere? 
The intellectual East Side was practically a foreign country 
to me, and I was proud of the fact. I knew something of its 
orthodox Talmudists, but scarcely an3rfching of its modern 
men of letters, poets, thinkers, himiorists, whether they 
wrote in Yiddish, in Hebrew, in Russian, or in English. If I 
took an occasional look at the socialist Yiddish daily it was 
chiefly to see what was going on in the Cloak-makers’ 
Union. Otherwise I regarded everything that was written 
for the East Side with contempt, and “East Side Writer” 
was synonymous with “greenhorn” and “tramp.” Worse 
than that, it was identified in my mind with socialism, 
anarchism, and trade-unionism. It was something sinister, 
absurd, and uncouth. 

But Miss Tevkin was a beautiful girl, nevertheless. So 
I pitied her for being the daughter of an East Side writer. 

The tennis game did not last long. Miss Tevkin and 
her companion soon went indoors. I went out for a stroll 
by myself. I was thinking of my journey to TannersviUe 
the next morning. The enforced loss of time chafed me. 
'^Of the strong impression which the tall girl had produced 

410 


MISS TEVKIN 


on me not a trace seemed to have been left. She bothered 
me no more than any other pretty girl I might have re- 
cently come across. Yoting women with strikingly inter- 
esting faces and figures were not rare in New York. 

I had not been walking five minutes when I impa- 
tiently returned to the hotel to consult the time-tables. 


CHAPTER II 


I WAS chatting with Rivesman, the lessee of the hotel, 
across the counter that separated part of his ofiSce 
from the lobby. As I have said, I had known him for many 
years. He had formerly been in the insurance business, 
and he had at one time acted as my insurance broker. He 
was a Talmudist, and well versed in modern Hebrew litera- 
ture, to boot. He advised me concerning trains to Tanners- 
ville, and then we passed to the hotel business and mutual 
acquaintances. 

Presently Miss Tevkin, apparently on her way from her 
room, paused at the counter, by my side, to leave her key. 
She was dressed for dinner, although it was not yet half past 
4 o’clock and the great Saturday-evening repast, for which 
train after train was bringing husbands and other “week- 
enders” to the mountains, was usually a very late affair. 

The dress she now wore was a modest gown of navy 
blue trimmed with lace. The change of attire seemed to 
have produced a partial change in her identity. She was 
interesting in a new way, I thought. 

“Going to enjoy the fresh air?” Rivesman asked her, 
gallantly. 

“Ye-es,” she answered, pleasantly. “It’s glorious out- 
side.” And she vanished. 

“Pretty girl,” I remarked. 

“And a well-bred one, too — in the real sense of the word.” 
“One of your two-week guests, I suppose,” I said, with 
studied indifference. 

“Yes. She is a stenographer.” Whereupon he named 
a well-known lawyer, a man prominent in the affairs of the 
Jewish community, as her employer. “It was an admirer 
of her father who got the job for her.” 

From what followed I learned that Miss Tevkin’s father 
had once been a celebrated Hebrew poet and that he was no 

412 


MISS TEVKIN 


other than the hero of the romance of which Naphtali 
had told me a few months before I left my native place to 
go to America, and that her mother was the heroine of that 
romance. In other words, her mother was the once cele- 
brated beauty, the daughter of the famous Hebrew writer 
(long since deceased). Doctor Rachaeless of Odessa. 

“It was her father, then, who wrote those love-letters !’’ 
I exclaimed, excitedly. “And it was about her mother 
that he wrote them! Somebody told me on the veranda 
that her name was Miss Tevkin. I did think the name 
sounded familiar, but I could not locate it.” 

The discovery stirred me inordinately. I was pal- 
pitating with reminiscent interest and with a novel interest 
in the beautiful girl who had just stood by my side. 

At my request Rivesman, followed by myself, sought her 
out on the front porch and introduced me to her as “a 
great admirer of your father’s poetry.” 

Seated beside her was a bald-headed man with a lone 
wisp of hair directly over his forehead whom the hotel- 
keeper introduced as “Mr. Shapiro, a cotmselor,” and who 
by his manner of greeting me showed that he was fully 
aware of my financial standing. 

The old romance of the Hebrew poet and his present wife, 
and more especially the fact that I had been thrilled by it 
in Antomir, threw a halo of ineffable fascination around 
their beautiful daughter. 

“So you are a daughter of the great Hebrew poet,” I 
said in English. 

“ It’s awfully kind of you to speak like that,” she returned. 

“Mr. Levinsky is known for his literary tastes, you 
know,” Shapiro put in. 

“I wish I deserved the compliment,” I rejoined. “Un- 
fortunately, I don’t. I am glad I find time to read the news- 
papers.” 

“The newspapers are life,” observed Miss Tevkin, “and 
life is the source of literature, or should be.” 

“‘Or shoiild be!’” Shapiro mocked her, fondly. “Is 
that a dig at the popular novels?” And in an aside to me, 
“Miss Tevldn has no use for them, you know.” 

She smiled. 

“Still worshiping at the shrine of Ibsen?” he asked her. 

“More than ever,” she replied, gaily. 

413 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 

“I admire your loyalty, though I regret to say that I am 
stiU unable to share your taste.’' 

“It isn’t a matter of taste,’’ she returned. “It depends 
on what one is looking for in a play or a novel.’’ 

She smiled with the air of one abstaining from a fruitless 
discussion. 

“She’s a blue-stocking,” I said to myself. “Women of 
this kind are usually doomed to be old maids.” And yet 
she drew me with a magnetic force that seemed to be beyond 
my power of resistance. 

It was evident that she enjoyed the discussion and the 
fact that it was merely a pretext for the lawyer to feast 
his eyes on her. 

I wondered why a bald-headed man with a lone tuft of 
hair did not repel her. 

A younger brother of Shapiro’s, a real-estate broker, 
joined us. He also was bald-headed, but his baldness 
formed a smaller patch than the lawyer’s. 

The two brothers did most of the talking, and, among 
other things, they informed Miss Tevkin and myself that 
they were graduates of the City CoUege. With a great 
display of reading and repeatedly interrupting each other 
they took up the cudgels for the “good old school.” I soon 
discovered, however, that their range was limited to a small 
number of authors, whose names they uttered with great 
gusto and to whom they returned again and again. These 
were Victor Hugo, Dtimas, Dickens, Thackeray, George 
Eliot, Coleridge, Edgar Poe, and one or two others. If the 
lawyer added a new name, like Walter Pater, to his list, 
the real-estate man would hasten to trot out De Quincey, 
for example. For the rest they would parade a whole array 
of writers rather than refer to any one of them in particular. 
The more they fulminated and fumed and bullied Miss 
Tevkin the fiimer grew my conviction that they had 
scarcely read the books for which they seemed to be ready 
to lay down their lives. 

Miss Tevkin, however, took them seriously. She fol- 
lowed them with the air of a “good girl” listening to a 
lecture by her mother or teacher. 

“I don’t agree with you at all,” she would say, weakly, 
from time to time, and resume listening with charming 
resignation. 


414 


MISS TEVKIN 


The noise made by the two brothers attracted several 
other boarders. One of these was a slovenly-looking man 
of forty-five who spoke remarkably good English with a 
very bad accent (far worse than mine). That he was a 
Talmudic scholar was written all over his face. By pro- 
fession he was a photographer. His name was Mendelson. 
He took a hand in our discussion, and it at once became ap- 
parent that he had read more and knew more than the bald- 
headed brothers. He was overflowing with withering sar- 
casm and easily sneered them into silence. 

Miss Tevkin was happy. But the slovenly boarder 
proved to be one of those people who know what they do not 
want rather than what they do. And so he proceeded, in 
a spirit of chivalrous banter, to make game of her literary 
gods as well. 

“You don’t really mean to tell us that you enjoy an 
Ibsen play?” he demanded. “Why, you are too full of life 
for that.” 

“But that’s just what the Ibsen plays are — ^full of life,” 
she answered. “If you’re bored by them it’s because 
you’re probably looking for stories, for ‘action.’ But art 
is something more significant than that. There is moral 
force and beauty in Ibsen which one misses in the old 
masters.” 

“That’s exactly what the ministers of the gospel or the 
up-to-date rabbis are always talking about — moral force, 
moral beauty, and moral clam-chowder,” Mendelson re*- 
torted. 

The real-estate man uttered a chuckle. 

“Would you tmn the theater into a church or a reform 
synagogue?” the photographer continued. “People go to 
see a play because they want to enjoy themselves, not 
because they feel that their morals need darning.” 

“But in good literature the moral is not preached as a 
sermon,” Miss Tevkin replied. “It naturally follows from 
the life it presents. Anyhow, the other kind of literature 
is mere froth. You read page after page and there doesn’t 
seem to be any substance to it.” She said it plaintively, 
as though apologizing for holding views of this kind. 

“ Is that the way you feel about Thackeray and Dickens, 
too?” I ventured. 

“I do,” she answered, in the same doleful tone. 

415 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 

She went on to develop her argument. We did not in- 
terrupt her, the two brothers, the photographer, and myself 
listening to her with admiring glances that had more to do 
with her beautiful face and the music of her soft, girlish 
voice than with what she was saying. There was a con- 
gealed sneer on the photographer’s face as he followed her 
plea, but it was full of the magic of her presence. 

“You’re a siUy child,’’ his countenance seemed to say. 
“But I could eat you, all the same.’’ 

She dwelt on the virtues of Ibsen, Strindberg, Knut 
Hamsen, Hauptmann, and a number of others, mostly 
names I did not recollect ever having heard before, and she 
often used the word “decadent,’’ which she pronounced in 
the French way and which I did not then understand. Now 
and then she would quote some critic, or some remark 
heard from a friend or from her father, and once she dwelt 
on an argument of her oldest brother, who seemed to be 
well versed in Russian literatrure and to have clear-cut 
opinions on literature in general. She spoke with an even- 
voiced fluency, with a charming gift of language. Words 
came readily, pleasantly from her pretty lips. It was 
evident, too, that she was thoroughly familiar with the 
many authors whose praises she was sounding. Yet I 
could not help feeling that she had not much to say. The 
opinions she voiced were manifestly not her own, as though 
she was reciting a well-mastered lesson. And I was glad 
of it. “She’s merely a girl, after all,’’ I thought, fondly. 
“She’s the sweetest thing I ever knew, and her father is 
the man who wrote those love-letters, and her mother is 
the celebrated beauty with whom he was in love.’’ 

Whether the views she set forth were her own or some- 
body else’s, I could see that she relished uttering them. 
Also, that she relished the euphony and felicity of her 
phrasing, which was certainly her own. Whether she 
spoke from conviction or not, one thing seemed indisputable : 
the atmosphere surrounding the books and authors she 
named had a genuine fascination for her. There was a 
naive sincerity in her rhetoric, and her delivery and gestures 
had a rhythm that seemed to be akin to the rhythm of her 
movements in the tennis-court. 

Miss Lazar passed by us, giving me a smiling look, which 
seemed to say, “ I knew you would sooner or later be in her 

416 


MISS TEVKIN 


company.” I felt myself blushing. “To-morrow I’ll be 
in Tannersville and all this nonsense will be over,” I said 
to myself. 

The long-faced, short girl with whom Miss Tevldn had 
played tennis emerged from the lobby door and was intro- 
duced to me as Miss Siegel. As I soon gathered from a 
bit of pleasantry by the la^er, she was a school-teacher. 

At Miss Tevlan’s suggestion we all went to see the crowd 
waiting for the last “husband train.” 

As we rose to go I made a point of asking Miss Tevldn 
for the name of the best Ibsen play, my object being to be 
by her side on otu: walk down to the village. The photog- 
rapher hastened to answer my question, thus occupying 
the place on the other side of her. 

We were crossing the sloping lawn. Miss Tevkin on a 
narrow flagged walk, while we were trotting along through 
the grass on either side of her, with the other three of our 
group bringing up the rear. Presently, as we reached the 
main sidewalk, we were held up by Auntie Yetta, who was 
apparently returning from one of the cottages across the 
road. 

“Is this the one you are after?” she demanded of me, 
with a wink in the direction of Miss Tevkin. And, looking 
her over, “You do know a good thing when you see it.” 
Then to her: “Hold on to him, young lady. Hold on 
tight. Mr. Levinsky is said to be worth a million, you 
know.” 

“She’s always joking,” I said, awkwardly, as we resumed 
our walk. 

Miss Tevkin made no answer, but I felt that Auntie 
Yetta’s joke had made a disagreeable impression on her. 
I sought to efface it by a humorous sketch of Auntie Yetta, 
and seemed to be successful. 

The village was astir. The great “husband train,” the 
last and longest of the day, was due in about ten minutes. 
Groups of women and children in gala dress were emerging 
from the various boarding-houses, feeding the main human 
stream. Some boarders were out to meet the train, others 
were on their way to the post-office for letters. A sunset 
of pale gold hung broodingly over the mountains. Miss 
Tevkin’s voice seemed to have something to do with it. 

Presently we reached the crowd at the station. The 

417 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 


train was late. The children were getting restless. At 
last it arrived, the first of two sections, with a few minutes’ 
headway between them. There was a jam and a babel 
of voices. Interminable strings of passengers, travel-worn, 
begrimed, their eyes searching the throng, came dribbling 
out of the cars with tantalizing slowness. Men in livery 
caps were chanting the names of their respective boarding- 
houses. Passengers were shouting the pet names of their 
wives or children; women and children were calling to their 
newly arrived husbands and fathers, some gaily, others 
shrieking, as though the train were on fire. There were a 
large number of handsome, well-groomed women in ex- 
pensive dresses and diamonds, and some of these were being 
kissed by puny, but successful-looking, men. “They mar- 
ried them for their money,’’ I said to myself. An absurd- 
looking shirt-waist-manufacturer of my acquaintance, a 
man with the face of a squirrel, swooped down upon a large 
young matron of dazzling animal beauty who had come in 
an automobile. He introduced me to her, with a beaming 
air of triumph. “I can afford a machine and a beautiful 
wife,’’ his radiant squirrel-face seemed to say. He was 
parading the fact that this tempting female had married 
him in spite of his ugliness. He was mutely boasting as 
much of his own homeliness as of her coarse beauty. 

Prosperity was picking the cream of the “bride market’’ 
for her favorite sons. I thought of Lenox Avenue, a great, 
broad thoroughfare up-town that had almost suddenly 
begun to swarm with good-looking and flashily gowned 
brides of Ghetto upstarts, like a meadow bursting into 
bloom in spring. 

“And how about your own case?’’ a voice retorted within 
me. “Could you get a girl like Fanny if it were not for 
your money? Ah, but I’m a good-looking chap myself and 
not as ignorant as most of the other fellows who have suc- 
ceeded,’’ I answered, inwardly. “Yes, and I am entitled 
to a better girl than Fanny, too.” And I became conscious 
of Miss Tevkin’s presence by my side. 

Conversation with the poet’s daughter was practically 
monopolized by the misanthropic photographer. I was 
seized with a desire to dislodge him. I was determined to 
break into the conversation and to try to eclipse him. 
With a fast-beating heart I began: 

418 


MISS TEVKIN 


“What an array of beautiful women! Present company” 
— with a bow to Miss Tevkin and her long-faced chum — 
“not excepted, of course. Far from it.” 

The two girls smiled. 

“Why! Why! Whence this sudden fit of gallantry?” 
asked the photographer, his sneer and the rasping Yiddish 
enunciation with which he spoke English filling me with hate. 

“Come, Mr. Mendelson,” I answered, “it's about time 
you cast off your grouch. Look! The sky is so beautiful, 
the mountains so majestic. Cheer up, old man.” 

The real-estate man burst into a laugh. The two girls 
smiled, looking me over ctiriously. I hastened to follow up 
my advantage. 

“One does get into a peculiar mood on an evening like 
this,” I pursued. “The air is so divine and the people are 
so happy.” 

“That’s what we all come to the mountains for,” the 
photographer retorted. 

Ignoring his remark, I resumed: “It may seem a con- 
tradiction of terms, but these family reunions, these shouts 
of welcome, are so thrilling it makes one feel as if there was 
something pathetic in them.” 

“Pathetic?” the bald-headed real-estate man asked in 
surprise. 

“Mr. Levinsky is in a pathetic mood, don’t you know,” 
the photographer cut in. 

“Yes, pathetic,” I defied him. “But pathos has nothing 
to do with grouch, has it?” I asked, addressing myself to 
the girls. 

“Why, no,” Miss Siegel replied, with a perfunctory smile. 
“Still, I should rather see people meet than part. It’s 
heartbreaking to watch a train move out of a station, with 
those white handkerchiefs waving, and getting smaller, 
smaller. Oh, those handkerchiefs!” 

It was practically the first remark I had heard from her. 
It produced a stronger impression on my mind than all 
Miss Tevkin had said. Nevertheless, I felt that I should 
much rather listen to Miss Tevkin. 

“Of course, of course,” I said. “Leave-taking is a very 
touching scene to witness. But still, when people rpeet 
again after a considerable separation, it’s also touching. 
Don’t you think it is?” 


419 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 

“Yes, I know what you mean,” Miss Siegel assented, 
somewhat aloofly. 

“People cry for joy,” Miss Tevkin put in, non-commit- 
tally. 

“Yes, but they cry, all the same. There are tears,” I 
urged. 

“I had no idea you were such a cry-baby, Mr. Levinsky,” 
the photographer said. “Perhaps you’ll feel better when 
you’ve had dinner. But I thought you said this weather 
made you happy.” 

“It simply means that at the bottom of our hearts we 
Jews are a sad people,” Miss Tevkin interceded. “There 
is a broad streak of tragedy in our psychology. It’s the 
result of many centuries of persecution and homelessness. 
Gentiles take life more easily than we do. My father has 
a beautiful poem on the theme. But then the Russians 
are even more melancholy than we are. Russian literature 
is full of it. My oldest brother, who is a great stickler for 
everything Russian, is always speaking about it.” 

“Always referring to her papa and her brother,” I 
thought. “What a sweet child.” 

Presently she and her long-faced chum were hailed by a 
group of young men and women, and, excusing themselves 
to us, they ran over to join them. I felt like a man sipping 
at a glass of wine when the glass is suddenly seized from his 
hand. 

Some time later I sat on a cane chair amid flower-beds 
in front of the Rigi Kuhn, inhaling the scented evening air 
and gazing down the sloping side of the lawn. Women and 
girls were returning from the post-office, many of them with 
letters in their hands. Some of these were so impatient to 
know their contents that they were straining their eyes to 
read them in the sickly light that fell from a sparse row of 
electric lamps. I watched their faces. In one case it was 
quite evident that the letter was a love-message, and that 
the girl who was reading it was tremendously happy. In 
another I wondered whether the missive had come from a 
son. It was for Miss Tevkin’s return that I was watching. 
But the dinner-gong soimded before she made her ap- 
pearance. 


CHAPTER III 


D inner at the Rigi Kulm on a Saturday evening was 
not merely a meal. It was, in addition, or chiefly, a 
great social function and a gown contest. 

The band was playing. As each matron or girl made her 
appearance in the vast dining-room the female boarders 
already seated would look her over with feverish interest, 
comparing her gown and diamonds with their own. It was 
as though it were especially for this parade of dresses and 
finery that the band was playing. As the women came 
trooping in, arrayed for the ejdiibition, some timid, others 
brazenly self-confident, they seemed to be marching in 
time to the music, like so many chorus-girls tripping before 
a theater audience, or hke a procession of model-girls at a 
style-display in a big department store. Many of the 
women strutted affectedly, with “refined” mien. Indeed, 
I knew that most of them had a feeling as though wearing a 
hundred-and-fifty-dollar dress was in itself culture and 
education. 

Mrs. Kalch kept talking to me, now aloud, now in 
whispers. She was passing judgment on the gowns and 
incidentally initiating me into some of the innermost details 
of the gown race. It appeared that the women kept tab 
on one another’s dresses, shirt-waists, shoes, ribbons, pins, 
earrings. She pointed out two matrons who had never 
been seen twice in the same dress, waist, or skirt, although 
they had lived in the hotel for more than five weeks. Of 
one woman she informed me that she could afford to wear 
a new gown every hour in the year, but that she was “too 
big a slob to dress up and too lazy to undress even when she 
went to bed”; of another, that she would owe her grocer 
and butcher rather than go to the country with less than 
ten big trunks full of duds; of a third, that she was re- 
peatecSy threatening to leave the hotel because its bills of 

421 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 

fare were typewritten, whereas “for the money she paid 
she could go to a place with printed menu-cards.” 

“Must have been brought up on printed menu-cards,” 
one of the other women at our table commented, with a 
laugh. 

“That’s right,” Mrs. Kalch assented, appreciatively. 
“I could not say whether her father was a horse-driver or a 
stoker in a bath-house, but I do know that her husband 
kept a coal-and-ice cellar a few years ago.” 

“That ’ll do,” her bewhiskered husband snarled. “It’s 
about time you gave your tongue a rest.” 

Auntie Yetta’s golden teeth glittered good-humoredly. 
The next instant she called my attention to a woman who, 
driven to despair by the superiority of her “bosom friend’s ” 
gowns, had gone to the city for a fortnight, ostensibly to 
look for a new flat, but in reality to replenish her ward- 
robe. She had just returned, on the big “husband train, 
and now “her bosom friend won’t be able to eat or sleep, 
trying to guess what kind of dresses she brought back.” 

Nor was this the only kind of gossip upon which Mrs. 
Kalch regaled me. She told me, for example, of some sensa- 
tional discoveries made by several boarders regarding a 
certain mother of five children, of her sister who was “not 
a bit better,” and of a couple who were supposed to be man 
and wife, but who seemed to be “somebody else’s man and 
somebody else’s wife.” 

At last Miss Tevkin and Miss Siegel entered the dining- 
room. Something like a thrill passed through me. I felt 
like exclaiming, “At last!” 

“That’s the one I met you with, isn’t it? Not bad- 
looking,” said Mrs. Kalch. 

“Which do you mean?” 

“‘Which do you mean’! The tall one, of course; the 
one you were so sweet on. Not the dwarf with the horse- 
face.” 

“They’re fine, educated girls, both of them,” I rejoined. 

“Both of them! As if it was all the same to you!” At 
this she bent over and gave me a glare and a smile that 
brought the color to my face. “The tall one is certainly 
not bad-looking, but we don’t call that pretty in this 
place.” 

“Are there many prettier ones?” I asked, gaily. 

^422 


MISS TEVKIN 

“I haven’t counted them, but I can show you some girls 
who shine like the sun. There is one!” she said, pointing 
at a girl on the other side of the aisle. “A regular princess. 
Don’t you think so?” 

“She’s a pretty girl, all right,” I replied, “but in com- 
parison with that tall one she’s like a nice piece of cotton 
goods alongside of a piece of imported silk.” 

“Look at him! He’s stuck on her. Does she know it? 
If she does not, I’ll tell her and collect a marriage-broker’s 
commission.” 

I loathed myself for having talked too much. 

“ I was joking, of course,” I tried to mend matters. “ All 
girls are pretty.” 

Luckily Mrs. Kalch’s attention was at this point diverted 
by the arrival of the waiter with a huge platter laden with 
roast chicken, which he placed in the middle of the table. 
There ensued a silent race for the best portions. One of the 
other two women at the table was the first to obtain pos- 
session of the platter. Taking her time about it, she first 
made a careful examination of its contents and then attacked 
what she evidently considered a choice piece. By way of 
calling my attention to the proceeding. Auntie Yetta 
stepped on my foot under the table and gave me a knowing 
glance. 

The noise in the dining-room was unendurable. It 
seemed as though everybody was talking at the top of his 
voice. The musicians— a pianist and two violinists — foimd 
it difficult to make themselves heard. They were pounding 
and sawing frantically in a vain effort to beat the bedlam 
of conversation and laughter. It was quite touching. The 
better to take in the effect of the turmoil, I shut my eyes 
for a moment, whereupon the noise reminded me of the 
Stock Exchange. 

The conductor, who played the first violin, was a fiery 
little fellow with a high crown of black hair. He was 
working every muscle and nerve in his body. He played 
selections from “Aida,” the favorite opera of the Ghetto; 
he played the popular American songs of the day; he 
played celebrated “hits” of the Yiddish stage. All to no 
purpose. Finally, he had recourse to what was apparently 
his last resort. He struck up the “Star-spangled Banner ” 
The effect was overwhelming. The few hundred diners rose 

423 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 


like one man, applauding. The children and many of the 
adults caught up the tune joyously, passionately. It was 
an interesting scene. Men and women were offering thanks- 
giving to the flag under which they were eating this good 
dinner, wearing these expensive clothes. There was the 
jingle of newly-acquired dollars in oiu* applause. But there 
was something else in it as well. Many of those who were 
now paying tribute to the Stars and Stripes were hstening 
to the tune with grave, solemn mien. It was as if they were 
saying: “We are not persecuted imder this flag. At last 
we have found a home.” 

Love for America blazed up in my soul. I shouted to 
the musicians, “ My Country,” and the cry spread like wild- 
fire. The musicians obeyed and we all sang the anthem 
from the bottom of our souls. 


CHAPTER IV 


I WAS in the lobby, chatting with the clerk across his 
counter and casting glances at the dining-room door. 
Miss Tevkin had not yet finished her meal and I was watch- 
ing for her to appear. Presently she did, toying with 
Miss Siegel’s hand. 

“Feeling better now?” I asked, stepping up to meet 
them. “I hope you enjoyed your dinner.” 

“Oh, we were so hungry, I don’t think we knew what we 
were eating,” Miss Tevkin returned, politely. 

“Going to take the air on the veranda?” 

“Why — no. We are going out for a walk,” she an- 
swered in a tone that said as clearly as words that my 
company was not wanted. And, nodding with exaggerated 
amiability, they passed out. 

The blood rushed to my face as though she had slapped it. 
I stood petrified. “It’s all because of Mrs. Kalch’s 
tongue, confound her!” I thought. “To-morrow I shall 
be in TannersviUe and this trifling incident will be for- 
gotten.” But at this I became aware that I did not care 
to go to TannersviUe and that the prospect of seeing 
Fanny had lost its attraction for me. I went back to the 
counter and attempted to resume my conversation with the 
clerk, but he was a handsome fellow, which was one of his 
chief qualifications for the place, and so I soon found my- 
self in the midst of a bevy of girls and married women. 
However, they all seemed to know that I was a desirable 
match and they gradually transferred their attentions to 
me, the girls in their own interests and the older matrons 
in those of their marriageable daughters. Their crude 
amenities sickened me. One middle-aged woman tried to 
monopolize me by a confidential talk concerning the social 
inferiority of the Catskills. 

“The food is good here,” she said, in English. “There’s 

425 


28 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 

no kick coinin' on that score. But my daughter says with 
her dresses she could go to any hotel in Atlantic City, and 
she’s right, too. I don’t care what you say.” 

I fled as soon as I could. I went to look for a seat on 
the spacious veranda. I said to myself that Miss Tevkin 
and Miss Siegel must have had an appointment with some 
one else and that I had no cause for feeling slighted by 
them. 

I felt reassured, but I was lonely. I was yearning for 
some congenial company, and blamed fate for having 
allowed Miss Tevkin to make another engagement — if she 
had. 

The veranda was crowded and almost as noisy as the 
dining-room had been. There was a hubbub of broken 
English, the gibberish being mostly spoken with self- 
confidence and ease. Indeed, many of these people had 
some difficulty in speaking their native tongue. Bad 
English replete with literal translations from untranslatable 
Yiddish iffioms had become their natural speech. The 
younger parents, however, more susceptible of the^in- 
fluence of their children, spoke purer English. 

It was a dark night, but the sky was full of stars, full of 
golden mystery. The mountains rose black, vast, dis- 
quieting. A tumultuous choir of invisible katydids was 
reciting an interminable poem on an unpoetic subject that 
had something to do with Miss Tevkin. The air was even 
richer in aroma than it had been in the morning, but its 
breath seemed to be part of the uncanny stridulation of the 
katydids. The windows of the dancing-pavilion beyond 
the level part of the lawn gleamed like so many sheets of 
yellow fire. Presently its door flew open, sending a slant- 
ing shaft of light over the grass. 

I found a chair on the veranda, but I was restless, and the 
chatter of two women in front of me grated on my nerves. 
I wondered where Miss Tevkin and her companion were at 
this minute. I was saying to myself that I would never 
come near them again, that I was going to see Fanny; 
but I did not cease wondering where they were. The two 
women in front of me were discussing the relative virtues 
and faults of little boys and little girls. They agreed that 
a boy was a “big loafer” and a great source of trouble, and 
that a little girl was more obeffient and clinging. It ap- 


MISS TEVKIN 

peared that one of these two mothers had a boy and two 
girls and that, contrary to her own wish, he was her great 
pet, although he was not the “baby.” 

“lam just crazy for him,” she said, plaintively. 

She boasted of his baseball record, whereupon she used 
the slang of the game with so much authority that it be- 
came entertaining, but by a curious association of ideas 
she turned the conversation to the subject of a family who 
owed the hotel-keeper their last summer’s board and who 
had been accepted this time in the hope that they would 
pay their old debt as well as their new bills. 

Two men to the right of me were complaining of the 
unions and the walking delegates, of traveling salesmen, of 
buyers. Then they took up the subject of charity, where- 
upon one of them enlarged on “scientific philanthropy,” 
apparently for the sheer lust of hearing himself use the 
term. 

I recalled that one of the things I was booked to do in 
Tannersville was to attend a charity meeting of East Side 
business men, of which Kaplan was one of the organizers. 
Two subscriptions were to be started — one for a home for 
aged immigrants and one for the victims of the anti- 
Jewish riots^in Russia — and I was expected to contribute 
sums large enough to do credit to my prospective father-in- 
law. 

The multitudinous jabber was suddenly interrupted by 
the sound of scampering feet accompanied by merry shrieks. 
A young girl burst from the vestibule door, closely followed 
by three yoimg men. She was about eighteen years old, 
well fed, of a ravishing strawberries-and-cream complexion, 
her low-cut evening gown leaving her plump arms and a 
good deal of her bust exposed. One of the rocking-chairs 
on the porch impeding her way, she was seized by her 
pursuers, apparently a willing victim, and held prisoner. 
Two of her captors gripped her bare arms, while the third 
clutched her by the neck. Thus they stood, the men strok- 
ing and kneading her luscious flesh, and she beaming and 
giggling rapturously. Then one of the men gathered her 
to him with one arm, pressing his cheek against hers. 

“She’s my vdfe,” he jested. “We are married. Let go, 
boys.” 

“I’ll sue you for alimony then,” piped the girl. 

427 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 

Finally, they released her, and the next minute I saw them 
walking across the lawn in the direction of the dancing- 
pavilion. 

The man who had talked scientific philanthropy spat in 
disgust. 

“Shame!” he said. “Decent young people wouldn’t 
behave like that in Russia, would they?” 

“Indeed they wouldn’t,” his interlocutor assented, ve- 
hemently. “People over there haven’t yet forgotten what 
decency is.” 

“Oh, well, it was only a joke, said a woman. 

“A nice joke, that!” retorted the man who had dwelt on 
scientific charity. 

“What would you have? Would you want American- 
born young people to be a lot of greenhorns? This is not 
Russia. They are Americans and they are young, so they 
want to have some fun. They are just as respectable as 
the boys and the girls in the old coimtry. Only there is 
some life to them. That’s all.” 

Young people were moving along the flagged walk or 
crossing the lawn from various directions, aU converging 
toward the pavilion. They walked singly, in twos, in 
threes, and in larger groups, some trudging along leisurely, 
others proceeding at a hurried pace. Some came from our 
hotel, others from other places, the strangers mostly in 
flocks. I watched them as they sauntered or scurried 
along, as they receded through the thickening gloom, as 
they emerged from it into the slanting shaft of light that 
fell from the pavilion, and as they vanished in its blazing 
doorway. I gazed at the spectacle until it fascinated me 
as something weird. The pavilion with its brightly illumi- 
nated windows was an immense magic lamp, and the young 
people flocking to it so many huge moths of a supernatural 
species. As I saw them disappear in the glare of the door- 
way I pictured them as being burned up. I was tempted 
to join the unearthly procession and to be “burned” like 
the others. Then, discarding the image, I visioned men and 
women of ordinary flesh and blood dancing, and I was 
seized with a desire to see the sexes in mutual embrace. 
But I exhorted myself that I was soon to be a married man 
and that it was as well to keep out of temptation’s way. 

Presently I saw Miss Tevkin crossing the lawn, headed 
428 


MISS TEVKIN 

for the pavilion. She was one of a bevy of girls and men. 
I watched her get nearer and nearer to that shaft of light. 
When she was finally swallowed up by the pavilion the 
lawn disappeared from my consciousness. My thoughts 
were in the dance-hall, and a few minutes later I was there 
in the flesh. 

It was a vast room and it was crowded. It was some 
time before I located Miss Tevkin. The chaotic throng of 
dancers was a welter of color and outline so superb, I 
thought, that it seemed as though every face and figure in 
it were the consummation of youthful beauty. However, as 
I contemplated the individual couples, in quest of the girl 
who fiUed my thoughts, I met with disillusion after disillu- 
sion. Then, after recovering from a sense of watching a 
parade of uncomeliness, I began to discover figures or 
faces, or both, that were decidedly charming, while here and 
there I came upon a young woman of singular beauty. 
The number of good-looking women or women with ex- 
pressive faces was remarkably large, in fact. As I scanned 
the crowd for the third time it seemed to me that the 
homely women looked cleverer than the pretty ones. 
Many of the girls or matrons were dressed far more daringly 
than they would have been a year or two before. Almost 
all of them were powdered and painted. Prosperity was 
rapidly breaking the chains of American Piuitanism, rap- 
idly “Frenchifying” the country, and the East Side was 
quick to faU into line. 

The band was again playing with might and main. The 
vehement little conductor was again exerting every nerve 
and muscle. His bow, which was also his baton, was poiur- 
ing vim and sex mystery into the dancers. As I looked at 
him it seemed to me as though the music, the thunderous 
clatter of feet, and the hum of voices all came from the 
fiery rhythm of his arm. 

Finally, I discovered Miss Tevkin. She was dancing 
with a s^ow-faced, homely, scholarly-looking fellow. The 
rhythmic motion of her tail, stately frame, as it floated and 
swayed through the dazzling light, brought a sob to my 
throat. 

When the waltz was over and her cavalier was taking her 
to a seat I caught her eye. I nodded and smiled to her. 
She returned the greeting, but immediately averted her 

429 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 

face. Again I felt as if she had slapped my cheek. Was 
I repugnant to her? I thought of my victory over the 
acrimonious photographer at the railroad station. Had I 
not won her favor there? And it came over me that even 
on that occasion she had shown me but scant cordiality. 
Was it all because of Auntie Yetta’s idiotic jest? 

She beckoned to Miss Siegel, who was on the other side 
of the hall, and presently she was joined by her and by some 
other young p^ple. 

She danced indefatigably, now with this man, now with 
that, but always of the same “set.” I watched her. 
Sometimes, as she waltzed, she talked and laughed bro- 
kenly, exchanging jokes with her partner or with some other 
dancing couple, ^metimes she looked solemnly absorbed, 
as though dancing were a sacred function. I wondered 
whether she was interested in any one of these fellows in 
particular. I could see that it gave her special pleasure 
to waltz with that sallow-faced man, but he was the best 
dancer in her group, and so homely that I discarded the 
theory of her caring for him otherwise than as a waltzing 
partner as absurd. Nor did she seem to be particularly 
interested in anybody else on the floor. As I scrutinized 
the men of her “set” I said to myself: “They seem to be 
school-teachers or writers, or beginning physicians, per- 
haps. They probably make less than one-third of what I 
pay Bender. Yet they freely talk and joke with her, while 
I cannot even get near her.” 

Miss Lazar, half naked, had been dancing with various 
partners, most of all with a freckled lad of sixteen or seven- 
teen who looked as though he were panting to kiss her. 
She and I had exchanged smiles and pleasantry, but in her 
semi-nudity she was far less prepossessing than she had 
been in the afternoon, and I had an imcontrollable desire to 
annoimce it to her, or to hurt her in some other way. Fi- 
nally, seeing a vacant seat by my side, she abruptly broke 
away from the freckled youth and took it. 

“You’ll have to excuse me, Ben,” she said. “I’m tired.” 

Ben looked the pictiu*e of despair. 

“Don’t cry, Ben. Go out and take a walk, or dance with 
some other girl.” 

“Is this your catch after many days of fishing?” I asked. 

“Nope. I’m angling for bigger fish. He’s just Ben, a 

430 


MISS TEVKIN 

college boy. He has fallen in love with me this evening. 
When I dance with somebody else he gets awful jealous.’^ 
She laughed. 

“He’s a manly-looking boy, for all his freckles.” 

“He is. But how would you like a little girl to fall in 
love with you?” 

I made no answer. 

“Why don’t you dance?” she asked. 

“Not in my Hne.” 

“Why?” 

“Oh, I never cared to learn it,” I answered, impatiently. 

“Come. I’ll show you how. It’s very simple.” 

“Too old for that kind of thing.” 

“Too old? How old are you?” 

“That’s an indiscreet question. Would you tell me your 
age?” 

“Indeed I would. Why not?” she said, with sportive 
defiance. “Only you woiildn’t believe me.” 

“Why wouldn’t I? Do you look much older?” 

“Oh, you cruel thing! I’m just twenty-three years and 
four months to-day. There!” she said, with embarrassed 
gaiety. 

‘ ‘ A sort of birthday, isn’t it ? I congratulate you. ’ ’ 

“Thank you.” 

“You’re welcome.” 

A pause. 

you won’t tell me how old you are, will you?” 
she resumed. 

“What do you want to know it for? Are you in the life- 
insurance business?” 

Another pause. 

“Look at that girl over there,” she said, tiying to make 
conversation. “She’s showing off her slender figure. She 
thinks she looks awftil American.” 

“You do have a sharp tongue.” 

“But you remember what Mrs. Kalch said: *A sharp 
tongue, but a kind heart.’ ” 

The band struck up a two-step. 

Ben was coming over to her, his freckled face the image 
of supplication. She shut her eyes and shook her head and 
the boy stopped short, his jaw dropping as he did so. 

“Don’t be hard on the poor boy,” I pleaded. 

431 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 


“That’s none of your business. I want you to dance 
with me. Come on. I’ll teach you.’’ 

I shut my eyes and shook my head precisely as she 
had done to Ben. 

She bmst into a laugh. “Ain’t you tired of being a wall- 
flower?” 

“Hove it.” 

“Do you really? Or maybe you want to watch some- 
body?” 

“ I want to watch everybody,” I replied, coloring the least 
bit. “When you were dancing I watched you, and I 
thought — well, I won’t tell you what I thought.” 

A splash of color overspread her face. 

“Go ahead. Speak out!” she said, with a sick smile. 

I took pity on her. “I’m joking, of course. But I do 
like to watch people when they dance,” I said, earnestly. 
“They do it in so many different ways, don’t you know.” 

I proceeded to point out couple after couple, commenting 
upon their peculiar manner and the special expression of 
their faces. One man was seemingly about to hurl his 
partner at somebody. Another man was eying other women 
over the shoulder of the one with whom he danced, appar- 
ently his wife. One woman was clinging to her partner 
with all her might, while her half-shut eyes and half-opened 
mouth seemed to say, “My, isn’t it sweet I” 

Miss Lazar greeted my observations with bursts of merry 
approval. Encouraged by this and full of mischief and 
malice, I made her watch a man with tapering white side- 
whiskers and watery eyes who was staring at the bare bust 
of a fat woman. 

“You had better look out, for his watery eyes will soon 
be on you.” 

Miss Lazar lowered her head and burst into a confused 
giggle. 

“You’re a holy terror,” she declared. 

I was tempted to take her out into the night and hug 
and kiss her and tell her that she was a nuisance, but the 
fear of a breach-of -promise suit held me in leash. 

I rose to go. As I picked my way through the crowd I 
watched Miss Tevkin, who sat between Miss Siegel and one 
of their cavaliers. Our eyes met, but she hastened to 
look away. 


432 


MISS TEVKIN 


“She has certainly made up her mind to shun me,” I 
thought, wretchedly. “She Imows I am worth about a 
million, and yet she does not want to have anything to do 
with me. Must be a Socialist. The idea of a typewriter 
girl cutting me! Pooh! I could get a prettier girl than 
she, and one well-educated, too, if I only cared for that 
kind of thing in a wife. Let her stick to her beggarly 
crowd!” 

It all seemed so ridiculous. I was bafified, perplexed, 
full of contempt and misery at once. “Perhaps she is 
engaged, after aU,” I comforted myself, feeling that there 
was anything but comfort in the reflection. 

I was biuming to have an explanation with her, to remove 
any bad impression I might have made upon her. 

An asph^t walk in front of the pavilion and the ad- 
joining section of the lawn were astir with boarders. A tall 
woman of thirty, of excellent figure, and all but naked, 
passed along like a flame, the men frankly gloating over her 
flesh. 

“ Wait a moment ! What’s your hurry ?” a young stallion 
shouted, running after her hungrily. 

In another spot, on the lawn, I saw a young man in 
evening dress chaffing a bare-shoiildered girl who looked no 
more than fifteen. 

“What! Sweet sixteen and not yet kissed?” he said to 
her, aloud. “Go on! I don’t believe it. Anyhow, I’d 
like to be the fellow who’s going to get you.” 

“Would you? I’ll tell your wife about it,” the little girl 
replied, with the good humor of a woman of forty. 

“Never mind my wife. But how about the fellow who 
is going to marry you?” 

“ I’d like to see him myself. I hope he ain’t going to be 
some boob.” 

The air was redolent of ^ass, flowers, ozone, and sex. 
All this was flavored with Miss Tevkin’s antipathy for me. 


CHAPTER V 


T he next morning I awoke utterly out of sorts. That I 
was going to take the first train for Tannersville seemed 
to be a matter of course, and yet I knew that I was not 
going to take that train, nor any other that day. I dressed 
myself and went out for a walk up the road, some distance 
beyond the grove. The sun was out, but it had rained all 
night and the sandy road was damp, solid, and smooth, 
like baked clay. It was half an hour before breakfast-time 
when I returned to my cottage across the road from the 
hotel. As I was about to take a chair on the tiny porch 
I perceived the sunlit figme of Miss Tevkin in the distance. 
She wore a large sailor hat and I thought it greatly enhanced 
the effect of her tall figure. She was making her way over 
a shaky little brieve. Then, reaching the road, she turned 
into it. I remained standing like one transfixed. The 
distance gave her new fascination. Every little while she 
would pause to look up through something that glittered in 
the sunshine, apparently an opera-glass. I had never 
heard that opera-glasses were used for observing birds, 
but this was evidently what she was doing at this moment, 
and the proceeding quickened my sense not only of her in- 
tellectual refinement, but also of her social distinction. 
Presently she turned into a byway, passed the grove, and was 
lost to view. 

I seated myself, my eye on the spot where I had seen her 
disappear. Somebody greeted me from the hotel lawn. 
I returned the salutation mechanically and went on gazing 
at that spot. I knew that I was making a fool of myself, 
but I could not help it. My will-power was gone as it 
might from the effect of some drug. 

When she reappeared at last and I saw her coming back 
I crossed over to the hotel veranda so as to be near her when 
she should arrive. I found several of the boarders there, 
434 


MISS TEVKIN 

including the lawyer, the photographer, and a jewelry 
merchant of my acquaintance. We all watched her com- 
ing. At one moment, as she leveled her opera-glass at a 
bird, the lawyer said: 

“Studying birds. She’s a great girl for studying. She 
is.’’ 

“Studying nothing!’’ the photographer jeered. “It’s 
simply booming to her. It’s effective, don’t you know.’’ 

The lawyer smiled sagely, as if what Mendelson said was 
precisely what he himself had meant to intimate. 

I was inclined to think that Mendelson was right, but 
this did not detract from the force that drew me to Miss 
Tevkin. 

When she reached the veranda the lawyer gallantly 
offered her a chair, but she dedined it, pleasantly, and 
went indoors. Her high heels had left deep, clear-cut 
imprints in a small patch of damp, sandy ground near the 
veranda. This physical trace of her person fascinated me. 
It was a trace of stem hostihty, yet I could not keep my 
eye away from it. I gazed and gazed at those foot- 
prints of hers till I seemed to be growing stupid and dizzy. 
“Am I losing my head?’’ I said to myself. “Am I obsessed? 
Why, I saw her yesterday for the first time and I have 
scarcely spoken to her. What the devil is the matter with 
me?’’ 

After breakfast we returned to the veranda. The 
jewelry-dealer and the lawyer bored me unmercifully. 
Finally I was saved from them by the arrival of the Simday 
papers, but my reading was soon disturbed by the in- 
tmsions of a mother and her marriageable daughter. 
There was no escape. I had to lay down my paper and let 
them torture me. There was a striking family resemblance 
between the two, yet the daughter was as homely as the 
mother was pretty. “She isn’t as prepossessing as her ma, 
of course,” the older woman seemed to be saying to me, 
“but she’s charming, all the same, isn’t she?” 

Miss Lazar was watching me at a respectful distance. 
Mrs. Kalch was deep in a game of pinochle in a small 
ground-floor room that gave out on the veranda. The 
window was open and 1 could hear Mrs. Kalch’s voice. 
She seemed to have been losing. The little room, by the 
way, was used both as a synagogue and a gambling-room. 

435 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 

In the mornings, before breakfast, it was filled with old 
men in praying-shawls and phylacteries, while the rest of 
the day, until late at night, it was in the possession of 
card-players. 

I wanted to wire Bender to send a message to Fanny, 
in my name, stating that I had been unavoidably detained 
in the city, but I lacked the energy to do so. I had not 
even the energy to extricate myself from the attentions of 
the pretty mother of the homely girl. 

That charity meeting bothered me more than anything 
else. One was apt to impute my absence to meanness. I 
pictured Kaplan’s disappointment, and I felt like going to 
Tannersville for his sake, if for no other reason. The 
next best thing woiild have been to have Bender wire my 
contribution to each of the two funds. But I did not stir. 

The hotel-keeper came out to remind me of my train. 

“Thank you,’’ I said, with a smile. “But the weather is 
too confoundedly good. I’m too lazy to leave your place, 
Rivesman. You must have ordered this weather on pur- 
pose to detain me.’’ 

I was hoping, of course, that my presence in this hotel 
would be unknown to the Kaplans, for some time at least. 
Soon, however, something happened which made it in- 
evitable that they should hear of it that very evening. 

On Sundays the Jewish summer hotels are usually visited 
by committees of various philanthropic institutions who go 
from place to place making speeches and collecting dona- 
tions. One such committee appeared in the dining-room 
of the Rigi Kuhn at the dinner-hour, which on Sundays 
was between i and 3. It represented a day nursery, an 
establishment where the children of the East Side poor 
are taken care of while their mothers are at work, and it 
consisted of two men, one of whom was an eloquent young 
rabbi. As the ecclesiastic took his stand near the piano 
and began his appeal my heart sank within me. I had once 
met him at Kaplan’s house, where he was a frequent visitor, 
and had given him a check. It goes without saying that I 
had to give him a contribution now and to tik to him. 
At this I learned, to my consternation, that he was going 
to Tannersville that very afternoon. 

“Shall I convey your regards?’’ he asked. 

“Very kind of you,’’ I answered, and I added in an under- 
436 


MISS TEVKIN 


tone, out of Mrs. Kalch’s hearing, “Please tell Mr. Kaplan 
I’m here on an important matter and that I have been 
detained longer than I expected.” 

"Wlien he had gone over to the next table I said to my- 
self: “I don’t care. Come what may.” 

In the evening, as the crowd swarmed out of the dining- 
room, it was greeted by a gorgeous sunset. Everybody 
appreciated its beauty, but Miss Tevkin and Miss Siegel 
went into ecstasies over it, with something of the specialist 
in their exclamations. As for me, it was the first rich sun- 
set I had seen since I crossed the ocean, and then I had 
scarcely known what it was. The play of color and light in 
the sky was a revelation to me. The edge of the sun, a 
vivid red, was peeping out of a gray patch of doud that 
looked like a sack, the sack hanging with its mouth down- 
ward and the red disk slowly emerging from it. Spread 
directly underneath was a pool of molten gold into which 
the sun was seemingly about to drop. As the disk con- 
tinued to glide out of the bag it gradually grew into a 
huge fiery ball of magnificent crimson, suffusing the valley 
with divine light. At the moment when it was just going 
to plunge into the golden pool the pool vanished. The 
crimson ball kept sinking until it was buried in a region of 
darkness. When the last fiery speck of it disappeared the 
sky broke into an evensong of color so solemn, so pensive 
that my wretched mood interpreted it as a visible dirge for 
the dead sun. Rose lapsed into purple, purple merged 
into blue, the blue bordering on a field of hammered gold 
that was changing shape and hue; all of which was eloquent 
of sadness. It seemed as though the heavens were in an 
ecstasy of grief and everybody about me were about to 
break into tears. 

“ Ah !” some of the old women gasped. ‘ ‘ How nice 1’ ’ 

“Isn’t it lovely?” said several girls. 

“Isn’t that glorious?” said Miss Tevkin. “It’s one of 
the most exquisite sunsets I have seen in a long time.” 
And she referred to certain “effects,” apparently in the 
work of a well-known landscape painter, which I did not 
understand. 

I discovered a note of consciousness in her rapture, some- 
think like a patronizing approval of the sky by one who 

437 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 


lcx)ked at it with a professional eye. Nevertheless, I felt 
that my poor soul was cringing before her. 

An epigram occurred to me, something about the dis- 
crepancy between the spiritual quality of the sunset and 
the after-supper satisfaction of the onlookers. I essayed 
to express it, but was so embarrassed that I made a muddle 
of my English. Miss Tevkin took no notice of the remark. 

The simset was transformed into a thousand lumps of 
pearl, here and there edged with flame. In some places the 
pearl thinned away, dissolving into the color of the s^, 
while the outline of the Itunp remained — a map of glowing 
tracery on a ground of the subtlest blue. Drifts of gold 
were gleaming, blazing, going out. A vast heap of sflver 
caught fire. The outlined map disappeared, its place being 
taken by a raised one, with continents, islands, mountains, 
and seas of ravishing aztue. 

What was the power behind this sublime spectacle? 
Where did it come from? What did it all mean? I vi- 
sioned a chorus of angels. My heart was full of God, full of 
that stately girl, full of misery. 

“If I only got a chance to have a decent talk with her!’* 
I said to myself again and again. 


CHAPTER VI 


I T was Monday afternoon. The week-end boarders and 
many others had left, and I was still idling my precious 
time away on the big veranda, listening to the gossip of 
women who bored me and trying to keep track of a girl 
who shimned me. My establishment in New York was 
feverishly busy and my presence was urgently needed there. 
It was more than probable that Bender had wired to 
Tannersville to call me home. The situation was ex- 
tremely awkward. Moreover, I was beginning to feel 
imeasy about certain payments that required my personal 
attendance. 

It was a quiet, pleasant afternoon. The boarders were 
scattered over the various parts of the hotel and its sur- 
roundings. Twenty-four of them, forming two coach 
parties, had gone to see some celebrated Catskill views, 
one to the Old Mountain House and the other to East 
Windham. Some were in the village. Miss Tevkin, wear- 
ing her immense straw hat, and with her opera-glass in her 
hand, was looking at birds in the vicinity of the hotel. 
Thus rambling about leisurely, she saimtered over to the 
main road near the grove. A few minutes later she turned 
into the same path where I had watched her disappear 
on the morning of the day before. And once more I saw 
her vanish there. 

I went out for a walk in the opjwsite direction. Soon, 
however, I turned back, strolling with studied aimlessness, 
toward that spot. 

What was my purpose? At first I did not know, but by 
little and little, as I moved along, an idea took shape in 
my brain: If I met her alone I might force her to listen to 
me and let her see the stuff I was made of. I lacked 
courage, however. While I was priming myself for the 

439 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 

coup I wished that it would be postponed. I dawdled. 
There were swarms of strange insects on the road, creatures 
I had never seen before. At first I thought they were 
grasshoppers, but they were gray and had wings. Every, 
now and then I would pause to watch them leap (or were 
they flying?) and drop to the ground again, becoming part 
of the dusty road. I followed them with genuine interest, 
yet all the time I kept working on the speech that I was 
going to deliver to Miss Tevkin. 

I was lingering at a spot a few yards from the grove on 
the opposite side of the main road when suddenly twilight 
fell over half of the valley. I raised my eyes. Behold! 
an inky cloud was crawling over the mountains, growing 
in size as it advanced. A flash of lightning snapped across 
the heavens. It was as though the sky screened a world 
of dazzling glory into which a glimpse had now been 
offered by a momentary crack in the screen. The flash 
was followed by a devout peal of thunder, as if a giant whose 
abode was in those dark clouds broke into a mmmm* of 
glorification at sight of the splendors above the sky. The 
trees shuddered, awe-stricken. I went under cover. A 
farmer was chasing a cow. As my eyes turned toward 
the grove they fell on Miss Tevkin, who was standing at the 
farther end of it, under its leafy roof, facing the main road. 
My heart beat fast. I dared not stir. 

A shower broke loose, a great, torrential downpour. It 
came in sheets, with an impetuous, though genial, clatter. 
It seemed as though the valley was swiftly filling with 
water and in less than an hour’s time it would reach the 
tops of the trees. I thought of Noah’s flood. I could 
almost see his dove winging her way over the waters. The 
storm had been in progress but seven or eight minutes 
when it came to an end. The sky broke into a smile again, 
as if it had all been a joke. 

Miss Tevkin left the shelter of the trees and set out in the 
direction of the hotel. I do not know whether she was aware 
of my proximity. 

It was clearing beautifully, when a new cloud gathered. 
This time a great, stem force, violent, vengeful, came into 
play. A lash of fire smote the firmament with frantic sud- 
denness, shattering it into a myriad of blinding sparks, 
yet leaving it uninjured. There was a pause and then 

440 


MISS TEVKIN 


came a ferocious crash. The universe was falling to pieces. 
Then somebody seemed to be tearing an inner heaven of 
metal as one tears a sheet of linen. This released a torrent 
that descended with the roar of Niagara, as though the 
metal vault that had just been rent asunder had been its 
prison. Miss Tevkin ran back to cover. The torrent 
slackened, settling down to a steady rain, spirited, zealous, 
amicable again. 

In a tiumoil of a^tation I crossed over to her. Instead, 
however, of beginning at the beginning of my well-pre- 
pared little speech, I blurted out something else. 

“You can’t run away from me now,” I said, with timid 
flippancy. 

“Please, leave me alone,” she besought, turning away. 

I was literally stunned. Instead of trying to say what 
I had in my mind and to force her to listen, I slunk away, 
in the rain, like a beaten dog. 

The shock seemed to have a sobering effect on me. I 
suddenly realized the imbecility of the part I had been 
playing, even the humor of it. The first thing I did upon 
reaching the hotel was to ask the clerk about the next 
train — not to Tannersville, but direct to New York. Going 
to see Fanny was out of the question now. 

There was a late train connecting with a Hudson River 
boat and I took it. 

29 


CHAPTER VII 


HEN I got home and my business reasserted its 



multitudinous demands on my attention, the 


Catskill incident seemed to be fading into the character of 
a passing summer-resort episode, but I was mistaken; the 
pang it left in my heart persisted. 

A fortnight after my return to the city I forced myself 
to take a trip to Tannersville. Fanny came to meet me at 
the train. As we kissed it was borne in upon me that I 
was irretrievably estranged from her. I tried to play my 
part, with poor success. 

“Are you worried, Dave? What's the matter with 
you?” Fanny demanded again and again. 

Her “What’s the matter with you?” jarred on me. 

I offered her sundry excuses, but I did not even take 
pains to make them ring true. 

Finally she had a cry and I kissed her tears away. 
While doing so I worked myself into a mild fit of love, but 
my lips had scarcely released hers when it was again clear 
to me that she was not going to be my wife. 

Our engagement was broken shortly after the family 
came back to the city. That burden lifted, it seemed as 
though the memory of my unfortimate acquaintance with 
Miss Tevkin had suddenly grown in clarity and painful 
acuteness. 

Our rush season had passed, but we were busy preparing 
for our removal to new quarters, on Fifth Avenue near 
Twenty-third Street. That locality had already become 
the center of the cloak-and-suit trade, being built up with 
new s^-scrapers, full of up-to-date cloak-factories, dress- 
factories, and ladies’-waist-factories. The sight of the 
celebrated Avenue swarming with Jewish mechanics out for 
their lunch hour or going home after a day’s work was 
already a daily spectacle. 


442 


MISS TEVKIN 


The new aspect of that section of the proud thorough- 
fare marked the advent of the Russian Jew as the head of 
one of the largest industries in the United States. Also, 
it meant that as master of that industry he had made good, 
for in his hands it had increased a hundredfold, garments 
that had formerly reached only the few having been placed 
within the reach of the masses. Foreigners ourselves, and 
mostly unable to speak English, we had Americanized the 
system of providing clothes for the American woman of 
moderate or humble means. The ingenuity and un- 
yielding tenacity of our managers, foremen, and operatives 
had introduced a thousand and one devices for making by 
machine garments that used to be considered possible only 
as the product of handwork. This — ^added to a vastly 
increased division of labor, the invention, at our instance, 
of all sorts of machinery for the manufacture of trimmings, 
and the enormous scale upon which production was carried 
on by us — ^had the effect of cheapening the better class of 
garments prodigiously. We had done away with pro- 
hibitive prices and greatly improved the popular taste. 
Indeed, the Russian Jew had naade the average American 
girl a “tailor-made” girl. 

When I learned the trade a cloak made of the cheapest 
satinette cost eighteen dollars. To-day nobody would 
wear it. One can now buy a whole suit made of all-wool 
material and silk-lined for fifteen dollars. 

What I have said of cloaks and suits applies also to skirts 
and dresses, the production of which is a branch of oiu: 
trade. It was the Russian Jew who had introduced the 
factory-made gown, constantly perfecting it and reducing 
the cost of its production. The ready-made silk dress 
which the American woman of small means now buys for 
a few dollars is of the very latest style and as tasteful in its 
lines, color scheme, and trimming as a high-class designer 
can make it. A ten-dollar gown is copied from a hundred- 
dollar model. Whereupon our gifted dress-designers are in- 
defatigably at work on the problem of providing a good fit 
for almost any figure, with as little alteration as possible, 
and the results achieved in this direction are truly phenom- 
enal. Nor is it mere apish copying. We make it our 
business to know how the American woman wants to look, 
what sort of lines she wo\dd like her figure to have. Many 

443 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 

a time when I saw a well-dressed American woman in the 
street I followed her for blocks, scanning the make-up 
of her cloak, jacket, or suit. I never wearied of studying 
the trend of the American woman’s taste. The subject 
had become a veritable id6e fioce with me. 

The average American woman is the best-dressed average 
woman in the world, and the Russian Jew has had a good 
deal to do with making her one. 

My Fifth Avenue establishment occupied four vast 
floors, the rent being thirty-eight thousand dollars a year. 
The office floor, which was elaborately furnished, had an 
immense waiting-room with gold letters on doors of dull 
glass bearing the legends: “General Offices,” “Show- 
rooms,” “Private Offices,” “Salesmen. Please show 
samples of merchandise between 9 and 12 a.m.,” and 
“Information.” The “Private Office” door led to a se- 
cluded little kingdom with the inscription “David Levin- 
sky” on one of its several doors, another door leading from 
my private office to the showrooms. 

I employed a large staff of trained bookkeepers, stenog- 
raphers, clerks, and cloak models. These models were ^ 
American girls of Anglo-Saxon origin, since a young woman 
of other stock is not likely to be built on American lines — 
with the exception of Scandinavian and Irish girls, who have 
the American figure. But the figure alone was not enough, 
I thought. In selecting my model-girls, I preferred a good- 
looking face and good manners, and, if possible, good 
grammar. Experience had taught me that refinement in 
a model was helpful in making a sale, even in the case of the 
least refined of customers. Indeed, often it is even more 
effectual than a tempting complexion. 

My new place was the talk of the trade. Friends came 
to look it over. I received numerous letters of congratula- 
tion, from mill men, bankers, retail merchants, buyers, 
private friends. My range of acquaintance was very wide. 
In hundreds of American cities and towns there were 
business people with whom my firm was in correspondence 
or whom I knew personally, who called me Dave and whom 
I called Jim, Jack, or Ned. So, many of these people, 
having received my circular describing my new place, 
sent their felicitations. Some of these letters were in- 
spired by genuine admiration for my enterprise and energy. 

444 


MISS TEVKIN 

All of them had genuine admiration for my success. 
Success! Success! Success! It was the almighty goddess 
of the hour. Thousands of new fortunes were ad’^^ertising 
her gaudy splendors. Newspapers, magazines, and public 
speeches were full of her glory, and he who found favor in 
her eyes found favor in the eyes of man. 

Nodelman scarcely ever left my place during the first 
three days. He would show visitors over the four floors 
with a charming pride, like that of a mother. Among the 
things he exhibited was the stub-book of my first check 
account, a photograph of the rickety house where I had 
had my first shop, and letters of congratulation from some 
well-known financiers. Bender, with a big, shining bald 
disk on his head, slender and spruce as ever, was fussing 
around with the gruff air of an unappreciated genius, while 
Loeb, also bald-headed, but fat and beaming, was telling 
everybody about the scraps he and I used to have on the 
road when he was a star drummer and I a struggling be- 
ginner. 

One of the men who came to congratulate me at my 
magnificent new place on Fifth Avenue was the kindly 
American commission merchant who had been the first to 
grant me credit when I was badly in need of it. As I 
took him over my immense factory, splendid showrooms, 
and offices, we recalled the days when it took a man of 
special generosity to treat a beginning manufacturer of my 
type as he had treated me. That was the time when woolen- 
mills would even refuse to bother with a check of a Russian 
Jew; he had to bring cash. In the rdle of manufacturer 
he was regarded as a joke. By hard work, perseverance, 
thrift, and ingenuity, however, we had completely changed 
all that. By the time I moved to the avenue our be- 
ginners could get any amotmt of credit. The American 
merchants dealing in raw material had gradually realized 
our energy, ability, and responsibility — ^realized that we 
were a good risk, while we, on our part, had assimilated the 
ways of the advanced American business man. 

Another man who came to see my new establishment was 
Eaton, the Philadelphia buyer who had given me my first 
lesson in table manners. He had a small, but well-estab- 
lished, business of his own now, and it was with my financial 
aid that he had founded it. Our friendship had never 

445 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 

flagged. Sometimes I go to spend a day or two in his cozy 
little house in North Philadelphia, where I feel as much 
at home as I do in Bender’s or Nodelman’s house. 

I assigned one of my office men to the special duty of 
looking up and inviting Mr. Even, the kindly old man who 
had bought me my first American suit of clothes and paid 
for my ffist American bath. He came back with the report 
that Mr. Even had been dead for over four years. The 
news was a genuine shock to me. It was as though it had 
come from my birthplace and concerned the death of a half- 
forgotten relative. It stirred a swarm of memories; but, 
of course, impressions and moods of this kind do not last 
long. I received requests for donations from all sorts of 
East Side institutions and I responded liberally. Mindels, 
the handsome doctor, made me contribute twenty-five 
hundred dollars to a prospective hospital in which he 
expected to be one of the leading spirits. 

There was dining and wining. I was being toasted, com- 
plimented, blessed. 

One of these dinners was given in my honor by my 
office employees, salesmen, designers, and foremen. Ben- 
der, who presided, told, in an elaborate and high-flown 
oration, of his experiences as my school-teacher, of our 
walks after school hours, and of our chance meeting a few 
years later. 

Loeb made a rough-and-ready speech, the gist of which 
was a joke on the bottle of milk which I had spilled while 
in the employ of Manheimer Brothers and which had led 
to my becoming a manufacturer. His concluding words 
were: 

“ There’s at least one saying that has come true. I mean 
the pying, ‘There’s no use crying over spilled milk.’ Mr. 
Levinsky, you certainly have no reason to cry over the 
milk you spilled at Manheimer ’s, have you?” 

I had heard the witticism from him more than once 
before. So had some of the other men present. Neverthe- 
lep, he now delivered it with gusto, and it was received 
with a hearty roar of merriment, in which his own laughter 
was the loudest. 

Among the people who came to rejoice in my success 
were some whose appearance was an amusing surprise to 
me. One of these was Octavius, the violinist, who had had 

446 


MISS TEVKIN 

nothing but contempt for me in the days when to go 
twenty-four hours without food was a usual experience 
with me. He had scarcely changed. He entered my office 
with bohemian self-importance. 

Glad to see you, Levinsky. I was glad to hear of your 
rise in the world,” he said, somewhat pompously. “I 
can’t complain, either, though. However, our fields are so 
different.” 

The implication was that, while I had succeeded as a 
prosaic, pitiable cloak-manufacturer, he had conquered the 
world by the magic of his violin and compositions. He 
never referred to olden times. Instead, he boasted of his 
successes, present and future. The upshot of the inter- 
view was that I sent a check to the treasurer of the free 
conservatory of which Octavius was one of the founders. 

I was elated and happy, but there was a fly in the oint^ 
ment of my happiness. The question, ‘‘Who are you living 
for?” reverberated through the four vast floors of my 
factory, and the image of Miss Tevldn visited me again and 
again, marring my festive mood. My sense of triumph 
often clashed with a feeling of self-pity and yearning. 
The rebuff I had received at her hands in the afternoon of 
that storm lay like a mosquito in my soul. 


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BOOK XIII 

AT HER FATHER’S HOUSE 












CHAPTER I 


I MADE it my business to visit a well-known Hebrew 
book-store on Canal Street. I asked for Tevkin’s works. 
It appeared that before he emigrated to America he had 
pubh^ed three small volumes of verse and prose, that they 
had once aroused much interest, but that they were now 
practically out of print. I tried two other stores, with the 
same result. I was referred to the Astor Library, whose 
Hebrew department was becoming one of the richest in the 
world. Sitting down in a public library to read a book 
seemed to be an imdignified proceeding for a manufacturer 
to engage in, but my curiosity was beyond considerations 
of this sort. Whenever I thought of Miss Tevkin I beheld 
the image of those three books — the only things related to 
her with which I was able to come in contact. 

Finally, on a Saturday afternoon, I found myself at one 
of the green tables of Astor Library. I was reading poetry 
written in the holy tongue, a language I had not used 
for more than eighteen years. 

Two of Tevkin’s three little volumes were made up 
of poetry, while the third consisted of brief essays, prose, 
poems, “meditations,’' and epigrams. I came across a 
“meditation” entitled “My Children,” and took it up 
eagerly. It contained but three sentences: 

“My children love me, yet my heart is hungry. They 
are mine, yet they are strangers. I am homesick for them 
even when I clasp them to my bosom.” 

The next “meditation,” on the same page, had the word 
“ Poetry ” for its head-line. 

“The children of Israel have been pent up in cities,” it 
ran. “The stuffy synagogue has been field and forest to 
them. But then there is more beauty in a heaven visioned 
by a congregation of worshipers than in the bluest heaven 
^ung by the minstrel of landscapes. They are not wor- 

451 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 

shipers. They are poets. It is not God they are speak- 
ing to. It is a sublime image. It is not their Creator. 
It is their poetic creation.” 

Several of the poems were dedicated to Doctor Rachaeles, 
and of these one of two stanzas seemed to contain a timid 
allusion to Tevkin’s love for his daughter. Here it is in 
prosaic English: 

“Saith Koheleth, the son of David: 'All the rivers run 
into the sea, yet the sea is not full.’ Ah! the rivers are 
flowing and flowing, yet they are fuU as ever. And my 
lips are speaking and speaking, yet my heart is full as 
ever. 

“Behold! The brook is murmuring and murmuring, but 
I know not of what. My heart is yearning and yearning, 
and I know not of what. I cherish the murmiu* of the 
brook. I cherish the pang of my lonely heart.” 

The following lines, which were also dedicated to Doctor 
Rachaeles and which were entitled “Night,” betray a 
similar mood, perhaps, without distinctly referring to the 
poet’s yearnings. 

“Hush! the night is speaking. Each twinkle of a star 
is a word from the world beyond. It is the language of men 
who were once here, but are no more. A thousand genera- 
tions of departed souls are speaking to us in words of 
twinkling stars. I seem to be one of them. I hear my 
own ghost whispering to me: ‘Alas!’ it says, ‘Alas!’” 

The three volumes were full of Biblical quaintness, and 
my estrangement from the language only added to the 
bizarre effect of its terse grammatical construction. I read 
a number of the poems, and several of the things in the 
prose volume. His Hebrew is truly marvelous, and much 
of the strength and charm of his message is bound up in it. 
As I read his poetry or prose I seemed to be listening to 
Jeremiah or Isaiah. The rhythm of his lines is not the only 
thing that is lost in my translation. There is a prehistoric 
vigor and a mystic beauty to them which elude the English 
at my command. To be sure, every word I read in his three 
little volumes was tinged with the fact that the author was 
the father of the girl who had cast her spell over me. 
But then the thought that she had grown up in the house 
of the man who had written these lines intensified the glow 
of her nimbus. 


452 


AT HER FATHER’S HOUSE 

As I returned the books to the official in charge of the 
Hebrew department I lingered to draw him into conversa- 
tion. He was a well-known member of the East Side 
Boh^me. I had heard of him as a man who spoke several 
languages and was amazingly well read — a walking library 
of knowledge, not only of books, but also of men and things. 
Accordingly, I hoped to extract from him some information 
about Tevkin. He was a portly man, with a round, youth- 
ful face and a baby smile. He smiled far more than he 
spoke. He answered my questions either by some laconic 
phrase or by leaving me for a minute and then returning 
with some book, pamphlet, or newspaper-clipping in which 
he pointed out a passage that was supposed to contain a 
reply to my query. I had quite a long talk with him. 
Now and then we were interrupted by some one asking 
for or retirming a book, but each time he was released he 
readily gave me his attention again. 

SpealSng of Tevkin, I inquired, “Why doesn’t he write 
some more of those things?” 

For an answer he withdrew and soon came back with 
several issues of The Pen, a Hebrew weekly published in 
New York, in which he showed me an article by Tevkin. 

“Have you read it?” I asked. 

He nodded and smiled. 

“Is it good?” 

“It isn’t bad,” he answered, with a smile. 

“Not as good as the things in those three volumes?” 

He smiled. 

“This kind of thing doesn’t pay, does it? How does he 
make a living?” 

“I don’t know. I understand he has several grown 
children.” 

“So they support the family?” 

“I suppose so. I am not sure, though.”^ 

“Can’t a Hebrew writer make a living in New York?” 

He shook his head and smiled. 

The dailies of the Ghetto, the newspapers that can afford 
to pay, are published, not in the language of Isaiah and 
Job, but in Yiddish, the German direct spoken by the 
Jewish masses of to-day. I asked the librarian whether 
Tevkin wrote for those papers, and he brought me several 
clippings containing some of Tevkin’s Yiddish contribu- 

453 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 


tions. It appeared, however, that the articles he wrote in 
his living mother-tongue lacked the spirit and the charm 
that distinguished his style when he used the language of 
the prophets. Altogether, Tevldn seemed to be accounted 
one of the “has-beens” of the Ghetto. 

One of the bits of information I squeezed out of the 
librarian was that Tevkin was a passionate frequenter of 
Yampolsky’s cafe, a well-known gathering-place of the 
East Side Boh^me. 

I had heard a good deal about the resort. I knew that 
many or most of its patrons were Socialists or anarchists 
or some other kind of “ists.” After my experience at the 
Cooper Institute meeting, Yampolsky’s cafe seemed to 
be the last place in the world for me to visit. But I was 
drawn to it as a butterfly is to a flame, and finally the 
temptation got the better of me. 


CHAPTER II 


T he caf 6 was a spacious room of six comers and a lop- 
sided general appearance. 

It was about 4 o’clock of an afternoon. I sat at the 
end of one of the tables, a glass of Russian tea before me. 
There were two other customers at that table, both poorly- 
clad and, as it seemed to me, ill-fed. Two tables in a 
narrow and dingier part of the room were occupied by- 
disheveled chess-players and three or four lookers-on. Al- 
together there were about fifteen people in the place. 
Some of the conversations were carried on aloud. A man 
with curly dark hair who was eating soup at the table 
directly in front of me was satirizing somebody between 
spoonfuls, relishing his acrimony as if it were spice to his 
soup. A feminine voice back of me was trying to prove to 
somebody that she did much more for her sister than her 
sister did for her. I was wretchedly ill at ease at first. 
I loathed myself for being here. I felt like one who had 
strayed into a disreputable den. In addition, I was in 
dread of being recognized. The man who sat by my side 
had the hair and the complexion of a gipsy. He looked 
exhausted and morose. Presently he had a fried steak 
served him. It was heavily laden with onions. As he 
fell to cutting and eating it hungrily the odor of the fried 
onions and the sound of his lips sickened me. The steak 
put him in good humor. He became sociable and turned 
out to be a gay, though a venomous, fellow. His small 
talk raised my spirits, too. Nor did anybody in the ca£6 
seem to know who I was or to take any notice of me. I 
took a humorous view of the situation and had the gipsy- 
faced nian tell me who was who. 

“Shall I begin with this great man?’’ he asked, facetiously, 
pointing his fork at himself. “I am the world-renowned 
translator and feuilleton writer whose writings have greatly 
increased the circulation of the Yiddish Tribune 

455 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 


Under the guise of playful vanity he gave vent to a 
torrent of self-appreciation. He then named all the 
“other notables present ” — a poet, a cartoonist, a budding 
playwright, a distinguished Russian revolutionist, an edi- 
tor, and another newspaper man — ^maligning and deriding 
some of them and grudgingly praising the others. Much 
of what he said was lost upon me, for, although he knew 
that I was a rank outsider, he used a jargon of nicknames, 
catch-phrases, and allusions that was apparently peculiar 
to the East Side Boh^me. He was part of that little world, 
and he was unable to put himself in the place of one who 
was not. I subsequently had occasion to read one of his 
articles and I found it full of the same jargon. The pubHc 
did not understand him, but he either did not know it or 
did not care. 

As he did not point out Tevldn to me, I concluded that 
the Hebrew poet was not at the cafd. 

“Do you Imow Tevkin?” I inquired. 

“There he is,” he answered, directing my glance to a gray* 
haired, clean-shaven, commonplace-looking man of medium 
stature who stood in the chess comer, watching one of the 
games. “ Do you know him?” 

“No, but I have heard of him. You did not include him 
in your list of notables, did you?” 

“Oh, well, he was a notable once upon a time. Our rule 
is, ‘Let the dead past bury it’s dead.’ ” 

I felt sorry for poor Tevkin. Turning half-way around 
in my seat, I took to eying the Hebrew poet. I felt disap- 
pointed. That this prosaic-looking old man should have 
written the lines that I had read at the Astor Library 
seemed inconceivable. The fact, however, that he was the 
father of the tall, stately, beautiful girl whose image was 
ever before me ennobled his face. 

I stepped over to him and said: “You are Mr. Tevkin, 
aren’t you? Allow me to introduce myself. Levinsky.” 

He bowed, grasping my hand, evidently loath to take his 
eyes off the chess-players. 

“I read some of your poems the other day,” I added. 

“My poems?” he asked, coloring. 

“Yes; I had heard of them, and as I happened to be at 
the Astor Library I asked for your three volumes. I read 
several things in each of them. I liked them tremendously. ’ " 
456 


AT HER FATHER’S HOUSE 

He blushed again. “It seems an age since they were 
written,” he said, in confusion. “Those were different 
days.” 

We sat down at a secluded table. To propitiate the 
proprietor and the waiter I ordered hot cheese-cakes. I 
offered to order something for Tevkin, but he declined, and 
he ordered a glass of tea, with the tacit understanding that 
he was to pay for it himself. 

“Why don’t you give us some more poems like those?” 

He produced his business card, sa)dng, “This is the kind 
of poetry that goes in America.” 

The card described him as a “general business agent and 
real-estate broker.” This meant that he earned, or tried 
to earn, an income by acting as broker for people who 
wanted to sell or buy soda-and-cigarette stands, news- 
stands, laundries, grocery-stores, delicatessen-stores, 
butcher shops, cigar-stores, book-stores, and what not, 
from a peddler’s push-cart to a “parcel ” of real estate or an 
interest in a small factory. Scores of stores and stands 
change hands in the Ghetto every day, the purchaser being 
usually a workman who has saved up some money with an 
eye to business. 

“Does it pay?” I ventured to ask. 

“I am not in it merely for the fun of it, am I?” he re- 
turned, somewhat resentfully. “Business is business and 
poetry is poetry. I hate to confound the two. One must 
make a living. Thank God, I know how to look things in 
the face. I am no dreamer. It is sweet to earn your 
livelihood.” 

“Of course it isr Still, dreaming is no crime, either.” 

“Ah, that’s another kind of dreaming. Do you write?” 

“Oh no,” I said, with a laugh. “I am just a prosaic 
business man.” And by way of showing that I was not, I 
veered the conversation back to his poetry. I sought to 
impress him with a sense of my deep and critical appre- 
ciation of what I had read in his three volumes. I spoke 
enthusiastically of most of it, but took exception to the 
basic idea in a poem on Job and Solomon. 

“It’s fine as poetry,” I said. “Some lines in it are per- 
fectly beautiful. But the parallel is not convincing.” 

“Why not?” he said, bristling up. 

We locked horns. He was pugnacious, bitter, but in- 
30 457 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 

•effectual. He quoted Hebrew, he spoke partly in Yiddish 
and partly in English; he repeatedly used the words 
“subjective” and “objective”; he dwelt on Job’s “ob- 
vious tragedy” and Solomon’s “inner sadness,” but he was 
a poor talker and apparently displeased with his own 
argument. 

“Oh, I don’t make myself clear,” he said, in despair. 

“But you do,” I reassured him. “I understand you 
perfectly.” 

“No, you don’t. You’re only saying it to please me. 
But then what matters it whether a business agent has a 
correct conception of Solomon’s psychology or not?” he 
said, bitterly. “Seriously, Mr. Levinsky, I am often out of 
•sorts with myself for hanging around this cafe. This is the 
gathering-place of talent, not of business agents.” 

“Why? Why?” I tried to console him. “I am sure 
you have more talent than all of them put together. Do 
you think anybody in this caf4 could write verse or prose 
like yours?” 

He looked down, his features hardening into a frown. 
“Anyhow, I cannot afford the time. While I loiter here I 
am liable to miss a customer. I must give myself entirely 
to my business, entirely, entirely — every bit of myself. I 
must forget I ever did any scribbling.” 

“You are taking it too hard, Mr. Tevkin. One can 
attend to business and yet find time for writing.” 

All at once he brightened up bashfully and took to re- 
citing a Hebrew poem. Here is the essence of it: 

“Since the destruction of the Temple instrumental music 
has been forbidden in the synagogues. The Children of 
Israel are in mourning. They are in exile and in mourning. 
Silent is their harp. So is mine. I am in exile. I am in a 
strange land. My harp is silent.” 

“Is it your poem?” I asked. 

He nodded bashfully. 

“When did you compose it?” 

“A few weeks ago.” 

“Has it been printed?” 

He shook his head. 

“Why?” 

“I could have it printed in a Hebrew weekly we publish 
'here, but — ^well, I did not care to.” 

458 


AT HER FATHER’S HOUSE 

“You mean The Pen?'* 

“Yes. Do you see it sometimes?” 

“I did, once. I am going to subscribe for it. Anyhow, 
the poem belies itself. It shows that your harp has not 
fallen silent.” 

He smiled, flushed with satisfaction, like a shy school- 
boy, and proceeded to recite another Hebrew poem: 

“Most song-birds do not sing in captivity. I was once 
a song-bird, but America is my cage. It is not my home. 
My song is gone.” 

“This poem, too, gives itself the lie!” I declared. “But 
the idea of America being likened to a prison!” 

“ It is of my soul I speak,” he said, resentfully. “ Russia 
did not imprison it, did it? Russia is a better country 
than America, anyhow, even if she is oppressed by a czar. 
It’s a freer country, too — for the spirit, at least. There is. 
more poetry there, more music, more feeling, even if our 
people do suffer appalling persecution. The Russian people 
are really a warm-hearted people. Besides, one enjoys 
life in Russia better than here. Oh, a thousand times bet- 
ter. There is too much materialism here, too much hurry 
and too much prose, and — yes, too much machinery. It’s 
all very weU to make shoes or bread by machinery, but 
alas! the things of the spirit, too, seem to be machine- 
made in America. If my younger children were not so 
attached to this country and did not love it so, and if I 
could make a living in Russia now, I shoiild be ready to go 
back at once.” 

“‘Comfort ye, comfort ye, my people, saith your God,’” 
I quoted, gaily. “It’s all a matter of mood. Poets are 
men of moods.” And again I quoted, “‘Attend unto me, 
O my friend, and give ear unto me, O my comrade.’” I 
took up the cudgels for America. 

He listened gloomily, leaving my arguments unanswered. 

By way of broaching the subject of his daughter I 
steered my talk to a point that gave me a chance to refer 
to his little “meditation,” “My Children.” 

“How well you do remember my poor little volumes,” 
he said, greatly flattered. “Yes, ‘My children love me.’ 
They are not children, but angels. And yet — God save 
me from having to be supported by them. They bring in a 
considerable sum at the end of the week, and they hate to 
459 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 

see me work or worry. But, oh, how sweet it is to earn 
one’s own living! Thank God, I do earn my share and my 
wife’s. My children are bitterly opposed to it. They beg 
me to stay home, but I say: ‘No, children mine! As long 
as your father can earn his bread, his bread he will earn.’ 
That’s why my humdrum occupation is so sweet to me.” 
At this he lowered his eyes and said, with the embarrassed 
simper which seemed to accompany every remark of his 
that implied self-appreciation, “I wrote something on this 
subject the other day, just a line or two: ‘There are in- 
stances when the jewel of poetry glints out of the prose of 
trade.’ ” 

The fact that his children contributed to the maintenance 
of the family nest was evidently a sore spot in his heart. 

His face, sensitive and mobile in the extreme, was like a 
cinematographic film. It recorded the subtlest change in 
his mood. The notion of its being a commonplace face 
seemed to me absurd now. It was a different image almost 
every minute, and my mental portrait of it was as unlike 
my first impression of it as a motion picture is unlike ainy 
of its component photographs. 

I parted from him without referring to his daughter, 
but I felt that I had won his heart, and it seemed to be a 
matter of days when he would invite me to his house. 

The next time I saw him, on an afternoon at Yampolsky’s 
caf^ again, there was an elusive deference in his demeanor. 
He seemed to me more reserved and ill at ease than he had 
been on the previous occasion. Finally he said, “I had 
no idea you were David Levinsky, the cloak-manufacturer.” 

. My vanity was so flattered that I was unable to restrain 
my face from betraying it. I answered, with a beaming 
smile, “I told you I was in the cloak business, didn’t I?” 

“I don’t think you did. Anyhow, I did not know what 
kind of a cloak-factory yours was,” he said. 

‘‘What kind do you mean?” I laughed. 

“Well, I am glad to know you are so successful. There 
was somebody who recognized you last time you were here. 
Your secret leaked out.” 

“Secret! Well, what difference does it all make? To 
possess a talent like yours is a far greater success than to 
own a factory, even if mine were the largest in the world.” 

He waved his hand deprecatingly. 

460 


AT HER FATHER’S HOUSE 

Our conversation was disturbed by a quarrel between 
two men at a near-by table. I was at a loss to make out 
what it was all about. Tevkin attempted to enlighten me, 
but I listened to him only partly, being interested in the 
darts of the two belligerents. All I could gather was that 
they were story-writers of two opposing schools. I felt, 
however, that their hostility was based upon professional 
jealousy rather than upon a divergence of artistic ideals. 

Finally one of them paid his check and departed. Tevkin 
told me more about them. He spoke of the one who stayed 
in the cafd with admiration. “He’s a real artist; some of 
his stories are perfect gems,” he said. “He’s a good fel- 
low, too. Only he thinks too^uch of himself. But then 
perhaps this is an inevitable part of talent, the shadow 
that is inseparable from the light of genius.” 

“Perhaps it’s the engine that sets it in motion, gives it 
incentive.” 

“Perhaps. I wish I had some of it.” 

I reflected that he did seem to have some of “it.” At 
all events, he did not seem to begrudge others their suc- 
cess. He spoke of the other people in the caf^ with singular 
good-will, and even enthusiasm, in fact. 

Some of the people present I had seen on my previous 
visit. Of the others Tevkin pointed out a man to me who 
knew six languages well and had a working acquaintance 
with several more; another who had published an excellent 
Hebrew translation of some of the English poets, and a third 
whose son, a young violinist, “had taken Europe by storm.” 

An intellecti^l-looking Gentile made his entry. He 
shook hands with one of the men I had seen on the former 
occasion and seated himself by his side. 

“ Either a joiimalist in search of material,” Tevkin ex- 
plained to me in answer to a question, “or simply a man of 
literary tastes who is drawn to the atmosphere of this place.” 

The cafd rose in my estimation. 

I learned from Tevkin that many of Yampolsky’s patrons 
were poor working-men and that some of these were poets, 
writers of stories, or thinkers, but that the cafd was also 
frequented by some professional and business men. At 
this he directed my attention to a “Talmud-faced” man 
whom he described as a liquor-dealer who “would be a 
celebrated writer if he were not worth half a million.” 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 

The last piece of information was a most agreeable sur- 
prise to me. It made me feel safe in the place. I regarded 
the liquor-dealer with some contempt, however. “Pshaw! 
half a million. He’s probably worth a good deal less. 
Anyhow, I coiild buy and sell him.’’ At the same time I 
said to myself, “He’s well-to-do and yet he chums aroimd 
with people in whom intellectual Gentiles take an interest.” 
I envied him. I felt cheap. 

I felt still cheaper when I heard that the literary liquor- 
dealer generously contributed to the maintenance of The 
Pen, the Hebrew weekly with which Tevkin was connected, 
and that he, the liquor-dealer, wrote for that publication. 

It appeared that Tevkin had an office which was a short 
distance from the bohemian caf^. I asked to see it, and he 
yielded reluctantly. 

“You can take it for granted that your office is a more 
imposing one than mine,” he jested. 

“Ah, but there was a time when all my office amounted 
to was an old desk. So there will be a time when yours will 
occupy a splendid building on Wall Street.” 

“That’s far more than I aspire to. All I want is to make 
a modest living, so that my daughters should not have to 
go to work. They don’t work in a shop, of course. One 
is a stenographer in a fine office and the other a school- 
teacher. But what difference does it make?” 

His office proved to be the hall bedroom of an apartment 
occupied by the family of a cantor named Wolpert. We 
first entered the dining-room, a door connecting it with 
Tevkin’s ‘ ‘ office ” being wide open. It was late and the gas- 
light was burning. Seated at a large oval table, covered 
with a white od-cloth, was Wolpert and two other men, 
all the three of them with ftdl beards and with the stamp 
of intellectual life on their faces. 

“There are some queer people in the world who will still 
read my poetry,’’ Tevkin said to them, by way of introduc- 
ing me. “Here is one of them. Mr. Levinsky, David 
Levinsky, the cloak-manufacturer.” 

The announcement made something of a stir. 

Mrs. Wolpert brought us tea. From the ensuing con- 
versation I gleaned that these people, including Tevkin, 
were ardent Zionists of a certain t5q)e, and that they were 

462 


AT HER FATHER’S HOUSE 

part of a group in which the poet was a ruling spirit. When 
I happened to drop a remark to the effect that Hebrew, 
the language of the Old Testament, was a dead language, 
Wolpert exclaimed: 

“Oh no! Not any longer, Mr. Levinsky. It has risen 
from the dead.” 

The other two chimed in, each in his way, the burden 
of their argument being that Hebrew was the living tongue 
of the Zionist colonists in Palestine. 

“The children of our colonists speak it as American 
children do English,” said Tevkin, exultingly. “They 
speak it as the sons and daughters of Jerusalem spoke it 
at the time of the prophets. We are no dreamers. We 
can tell the difference between a dream and a hard fact, 
can’t we?” — ^to the other two. “For centuries the tongue 
of our fathers spoke from the grave to us. Now, however, 
it has come to life again.” 

He took me into his “office,” lighting the gas-jet in it. 
A few minutes later he shut the dining-room door, his face 
assuming an extremely grave mien. 

“By the way, an idea has occurred to me,” he said. 
“But first I want you to know that I do not mean to profit 
by our spiritual friendship for purposes of a material nature. 
Do you believe me?” 

“I certainly do. Gk) ahead, Mr. Tevkin.” 

“What I want to say is a pure matter of business. 
Do you understand? If you don’t want to go into it, just 
say so, and we shall drop it.” 

“Of course,” I answered. 

We were unable to look each other in the face. 

“There is a parcel of real estate in Brooklyn,” he re- 
sumed. “One could have it for a song.” 

“ But I don’t buy real estate,” I replied, my cheeks on fire. 

He looked at the floor and, after a moment’s silence, he 
said: 

“That’s all. Excuse me. I don’t want you to think 
I want to presume upon our acquaintance.” 

“But I don’t. On the contrary, I wish it were in my 
line. I should be glad to — ■” 

“That’s all,” he cut me short. “Let us say no more 
about it . ” And he made an awkward effort to talk Zionism, 
again. 


463 


CHAPTER III 


T he real-estate “boom” which had seized upon the 
five Ghettos of Greater New York a few years before 
was still intoxicating a certain element of their population. 
Small tradesmen of the slums, and even working-men, were 
investing their savings in houses and lots. Jewish car- 
penters, house-painters, bricklayers, or instalment peddlers 
became builders of tenements or frame dwellings, real- 
estate speculators. Deals were being closed, and poor men 
were making thousands of dollars in less time than it took 
them to drink the glass of tea or the plate of sorrel soup over 
which the transaction took place. Women, too, were ar- 
dently dabbling in real estate, and one of them was Mrs. 
Chailan, the wife of my talented designer. 

Tevkin was not the first broker to offer me a “good 
thing” in real estate. Attempts in that direction had been 
made before and I had warded them all off. 

Instinct told me not to let my attention be diverted 
from my regular business to what I considered a gamble. 
“Unreal estate,” I would call it. My friend NcSelman 
was of the same opinion. “It’s a poker game traveling 
under a false passport,” was his way of putting it. 

Once, as I sat in a Brooklyn street-car, I was accosted by 
a bewigged woman who occupied the next seat and whom 
I had never seen before. 

“You speak Yiddish, don’t you?” she began, after 
scrutinizing me quite unceremoniously. 

“Ido. Why?” 

“I just wanted to know.” 

“Is that all?” 

“Well, it is and it is not,” she said, with a shrewd, good- 
natured smile. “Since we are talking, I might as well ask 
you if you would not care to take a look at a couple of new 
houses in East New York.” 


464 


AT HER FATHER’S HOUSE 

I did not interrupt her and she proceeded to describe the 
houses and the bargain they represented. 

When she finally paused for my answer and I perpetrated 
a labored witticism about her “peddling real estate in 
street-cars” she flared up: 

“Why not? Is it an5d:hing to be ashamed of or to 
hide? Did I steal those houses? I can assure you I paid 
good money for them. So why should I be afraid to speak 
about them? And when I say it is a bargain, I mean it. 
That, too, I can say aloud and to everybody in the world, 
because it is the truth, the holy truth. May I not live to 
see my children again if it is not. There!” After a pause 
she resumed: “Well?” 

I made no reply. 

“Will you come along and see the houses? It is not far 
from here.” 

“ I have no time.” 

She took up some details tending to show that by buying 
those two frame buildings of hers and selling them again 
I was stire to “clear” a profit of ten thousand dollars. 

I made no reply. 

“Well? Will you come along?” 

“Leave me alone, please.” 

“Ah, you are angry, aren’t you?” she said, sneeringly. 
“Is it because you haven’t any money?” 

The awkward scene that had attended Tevkin’s attempt 
to get me interested in his parcel haunted me. I craved to 
see him again and to let him sell me something. To be sure, . 
my chief motive was a desire to cultivate his friendship, to 
increase my chances of being invited to his house. The 
risk of buying some city lots in Brooklyn seemed to be a 
trifling price to pay for the prospect of coming into closer 
relations with him. Besides, the “parcel” seemed to be a 
sure investment. But I was also eager to do something for 
him for his own sake. And so I made an appointment with 
him by telephone and called at his wretched little office 
again. 

“Where is the parcel you mentioned the other day?” I 
began. “Where is it located?” 

“Never mind that,” he said, hotly. “There shall be 
no business between you and me. Nothing but pure 

465 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 


spiritual friendship. I made a foolish mistake last time. 
I hate myself for it. If you were a smaller man financially 
I should not mind it, perhaps. As it is, it would simply 
mean that you help me out. It would mean charity." 

I laughed and argued and insisted, and he succiimbed. 

We made an appointment to meet at Malbin’s, a large 
restaurant on Grand Street that was known as the “Real 
Estate Exchange" of the Ghetto. There I was introduced 
to a plain-looking man who proved to be the then owner of 
the parcel, and closed a contract for a deed. 

Encomaged by this transaction, Tevkin rapidly devel- 
oped some far-reaching real-estate projects in which he 
apparently expected me to be the central figure. One after- 
noon as we sat over glasses of tea at Malbin’s he said: 

“If you want to drink a glass of real Russian tea, come 
up some evening. We shall all be very glad to see you." 

I felt the color mounting to my face as I said, “I don’t 
think your daughter would like it." 

“My daughter?" he asked, in amazement. “But I have 
three daughters." 

“The one that spent some time at the Rigi Kulm in the 
Catskills last summer." 

“Anna?" he asked, with still greater surprise, as it were. 

“I don’t know her first name, but I suppose that’s the 
one." 

“If she was at the Rigi Kulm, it’s Anna." 

“Well, I had the pleasure of meeting her there, but I am 
afraid I was somewhat of a persona non grata with her," 
I said, in a partial attempt to make a joke of it. 

He dropped his glance, leveled it at me once more, and 
dropped it again. 

“Why, what was the matter?" he inquired, in great em- 
barrassment. 

“Nothing was the matter. A case of dislike at first 
sight, I suppose." 

“Still—" 

“You’d better ask her, Mr. Tevkin." 

He made no reply, nor did he repeat his invitation. He 
was manifestly on pins and needles to get away, without 
having the courage to do so. 

“So that’s what you wanted to meet me for?" he mut- 
tered, looking at the wall. 


466 


AT HER FATHER^S HOUSE 

“Well, I’ll tell you frankly how it was, Mr. Tevkin,” I 
said, and began with a partial lie calodated to bribe him: “I 
became interested in her because I heard that she was your 
daughter, and afterward, when I had returned to the city, 
I made it my business to go to the library and to read your 
works. My enthusiasm for your writings is genuine, how- 
ever, I assure you, Mr. Tevkin. And when I went to that 
cafe it was for the piirpose of making your acquaintance, 
as much for your own sake as for hers. There, I have told 
you the whole story.” 

There was mixed satisfaction and perplexity in his look. 

The next morning my mail included a letter from him. 
It was penned in Hebrew. It read like a chapter of the Old 
Testament. He pointed out, with exquisite tact, that it 
was merely as a would-be courtier that I had failed to find 
favor in his daughter’s eyes — something that is purely a 
matter of taste and chance. He then went on to intimate 
that if the unfortunate little situation rendered it at all 
inconvenient for me to visit his house he did not see why 
he and I could not continue our friendly relations. 

“If I have found as much grace in thine eyes as thou 
hast found in mine,” he wrote, “it would pain me to forfeit 
thy friendship. Let the unpleasant incident be forgotten, 
then. I have a very important business proposition to 
make, but should it fail to arouse thine interest, why, then, 
let all business, too, be eliminated, and let our bond be one 
of unalloyed friendship. I have been hungry for a fellow- 
spirit for years and in thee I have found one at last. Shall 
I be estranged from thee for external causes?” 

Whereupon he went into raptures over a prospective 
real-estate company of which he wanted me to be a leading 
shareholder. Companies or “combines” of this sort were 
then being formed on the East Side by the score and some of 
them were said to be reaping fabulous profits. 

My Hebrew, which had never been perfect (for the 
Talmud is chiefly in Chaldaic and Aramaic), was by now 
quite out of gear. So my answer was framed partly in 
Yiddish, but mostly in English, the English being tacitly 
intended for his daughter, although he understood the 
language perfectly. I said, in substance, that I was going 
to be as frank as he was, that I did not propose to invest 

467 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 


more money in real estate, and that I asked to be allowed 
to call on his daughter. The following passage was en- 
tirely in English: 

“I have made a misleading impression on Miss Tevkin. 
I have done myself a great injustice and I beg for a chance 
to repair the damage. In business I am said to know how 
to show my goods to their best advantage. Unfortunately, 
this instinct seems often to desert me in private life. There 
I am apt to put my least attractive wares in the show- 
window, to expose some unlovable trait of my character, 
while whatever good there may be in me eludes the eye of a 
superficial acquaintance. 

“Please assure your daughter that it is not to force my 
attentions upon her that I am asking for an interview. All 
I want is to try to convince her that her image of me is, 
spiritually speaking, not a good likeness.” 

Two days passed. In the morning of the third I re- 
ceived a telephone-call from Tevkin, asking to meet me. 
Impelled by a desire to impress him with my importance, 
I invited him to my place of business. When he came I 
designedly kept him in my waiting-room for some minutes 
before I received him. When he was finally admitted to 
my private office he faced me with studied indifference. 
He said he had only a minute’s time, yet he stayed nearly an 
hour. He asked me to come to his house. He spoke 
guardedly, giving vague answers to my questions. The 
best I could make of his explanation was that his daughter 
had been prejudiced against me by the fact that everybody 
at the Rigi Kulm had looked upon me as a great matrimonial 
“catch.” 

“My children have extremely modem ideas,” he said. 
“Topsy-turvy ones.” His face brightened, and he added: 
“The old rule is, ‘Poverty is no disgrace.’ Their rule is, 
‘Wealth is a disgrace.’” And he flushed and burst into 
a little laugh of approbation at his own epigram. 

“I suppose your daughter regarded me as a parvenu, an 
upstart, an ignoramus,” I remarked. 

“ No, not at all. She says she heard you say some clever 
things.” 

“Did she?” 

“Still, your letter was a surprise to her. She had not 
thought you capable of writing such things.” 

468 


AT HER FATHER’S HOUSE 


What really had occurred between father and daughter 
concerning my desire to call I never learned. 

Tevldn’s house was apparently full of Socialism. Indeed, 
so was the house of almost every intellectual family among 
our immigrants. I hated and dreaded that world as much 
as ever and I dreaded Miss Tevkin more than ever, but, 
moth-like, I was drawn to the flame with greater and 
greater force. I went to the Tevkins* with the feeling of 
one going to his doom. 


CHAPTER IV 


T he family occupied a large, old, private house in the 
Harlem section of Fifth Avenue, a locality swarming 
with our people. I called at 8 in the evening. It was 
in the latter part of March, nearly eight months after my 
unfortunate experience in the Catskills. I was received in 
the hall by Tevkin. He took me into a spacious parlor 
whose walls were lined with old book-cases and book- 
stands. There I found Anna and two of the other children 
of the numerous family. She wore a blouse of green velvet 
and a black four-in-hand tie. She welcomed me with a 
cordial handshake and a gay smile, as though all that had 
transpired between us had been a childish misunderstand- 
ing, but she was ill at ease. As for me, I was literally panic- 
stricken. It was at this moment, when I came face to face 
with her for the first time in the eight months following that 
Catskill incident, that I became aware of being definitely 
in love wdth her. 

The book-cases and book-stands were full to bursting. 
There was a piano in the room and two tables littered with 
books, prints, and photographs. The space between book- 
' cases and over the piano was hung with etchings, crayons, 
pen-and-ink drawings, and photographs. The other two 
of Tevkin’s children present were a chubby girl of twelve, 
named Gracie, and a young man of twenty-eight, two or 
three years older than Anna, named Sasha. Sasha had a 
half-interest in an evening preparatory school in which he 
taught mathematics, being now confined to the house by a 
slight indisposition. 

Mrs. Tevkin made her appearance — a handsome old 
woman of striking presence, tall, almost majestic, with a 
mass of white hair, with the beautiful featiires of the girl 
who was the cause of my being there. I thought of 
Naphtali. I had a desire to discover his address and to 

470 


AT HER FATHER’S HOUSE 

write him about my meeting with the hero and heroine of 
the romance of which he had told me a few months before 
I left Antomir. ‘T go to their house. She is still beauti- 
ful,” I pictured myself saying to him. Her demeanor and 
the very intonation of her speech seemed to proclaim the 
fact that she was the daughter of that illustrious physician 
of Odessa. It did not take me long to discover, however, 
that imder the surface of her good breeding and refinement 
was a woman of scant intellect. 

Seeing me look at the book-cases, she said: 

“ These are not all the books we have. There are some in 
the other rooms, too. Plenty of them. It’s quite a job 
for an American servant-girl to dust them.” 

Anna smiled good-humoredly. 

The next utterance of Mrs. Tevkin’s was to the effect 
that one had to put up with crowded quarters in America — 
a hint at the better days which the family had seen in 
Russia. 

Anna’s younger sister, Elsie, a school-teacher, came in. 
She had quicker movements and a sharper look than the 
stenographer and she bore strong resemblance to her father. 
Anna was the prettier of the two. We went down into the 
dining-room, where we found Russian tea, cake, and pre- 
serves. Presently we were joined by George, an insurance- 
collector, who was between Anna and Sasha, and Emil, an 
artist employed on a Sunday paper, who was between Anna 
and Elsie. Emil was a handsome fellow with a picturesque 
face which betrayed his vocation. The crayons and the 
pen-and-ink drawings that I had seen in the library were 
his work. He had a pale, high forehead and a thick, up- 
right grove of very soft, brown hair which I pictured as 
bfilowing in a breeze like a field of rye. “Just the kind of 
son for a poet to have,” I thought. 

There was another son, Moissey. He was married and 
I did not see him that evening. His mother was continu- 
ally referring to him. 

“I can see that you miss him,” I said. 

“I should say so,” Anna broke in. “He’s her pet.” 

“Don’t mind what she says, Mr. Levinsky,” her mother 
exhorted me. “She just loves to tease me.” 

“Mother is right,” Elsie interposed. “Moissey is not 
her pet. If somebody is, it’s I, isn’t it, ma?” 

471 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 


Anna smiled good-naturedly. 

“Gracie is my pet,” Mrs. Tevkin rejoined. 

“Gracie and Moissey, both,” Tevkin amended. “Mois- 
sey is her first-bom, don’t you know. But the great point 
is that he has been married only three months, and she 
has not yet got used to having him live somewhere else. 
She feels as if somebody had snatched him from her. 
When a day passes without her seeing him she is uneasy.” 

“Not at all,” Mrs. Tevkin demurred. “I am thinking 
of him just now because — ^because — well, because we 
have all been introduced to Mr. Levinsky except him!” 

“If two or three of the family were missing it wouldn’t 
be so marked,” Tevkin supported her, chivalrously. “But 
only one is missing, only one. That somehow makes you 
think of him. I feel the same way.” 

As he spoke it seemed to me that in his home atmosphere 
he bore himself with more self-confidence and repose than 
at the caf6 or at his office. His hospitality had made him 
ill at ease at first, but that had worn off. 

“You can depend on father to find some defense for 
mother,” remarked the picturesque Emil. 

At her husband’s suggestion and after some urging the 
hostess led the way back to the parlor, or library, where 
she was to play us something. As we were passing out of 
the dining-room and up the stairs Tevkin seized the oppor- 
tunity to say to me: 

“We live on the communistic principle, as you see. 
Each of us, except Mrs. Tevkin and the little one, con- 
tributes his earnings or part of them to the general treasury, 
my wife acting as treasurer and manager. Still, in the near 
future I hope to be able to turn the commune into a family 
of the good old type. My affairs are making headway, 
thank God. I sha’n’t need my children’s contributions 
much longer.” 

Mrs. Tevkin played some classical pieces. She had a 
pleasing tone and apparently felt at home at the keyboard, 
but it was to my eye rather than to my ear that her playing 
appealed. A white-haired Jewish woman at a piano "was 
something which, in Antomir, had been associated in my 
mind with the life of the highest aristocracy exclusively. 
But then Mrs. Tevkin’s father had been a physician, and 
Jewish physicians belonged, in the conception of my child- 

472 


AT HER FATHER’S HOUSE 

hood and youth, to the highest social level. Another mark 
of her noble birth, according to my Antomir ideas, was the 
fact that she often addressed her husband and her older 
children, not in Yiddish or English, but in Russian. Com- 
pared to her, Matilda’s mother was a plebeian. 

The only other person in the family who played the 
piano with facility and confidence was Emil. 

I had never been in a house of this kind in my life. I 
was fascinated beyond expression. 

Anna’s constraint soon wore off and she treated me with 
charming hospitality. So did Elsie. There was abso- 
lutely no difference in their manner toward me. Elsie 
gave me the attention which a girl usually accords to a 
close friend of her father’s, and this was ^so the sort of 
attention I received from her older sister. It was as if the 
Catskill episode had never taken place and she were now 
seeing me for the first time. 

I met Moissey and his wife at my next visit. He was 
a man of thirty-two or more, tall, wiry, nervous, with 
large, protruding, dark eyes. He was “a dentist by pro- 
fession and a Russian social democrat by religion,” as his 
father introduced him to me. 

“Karl Marx is his god and Plecnanoff, the Russian so- 
cialist leader, is his Moses,” the old man added. 

Moissey’s wife looked strikingly Semitic. She seemed to 
have just stepped out of the Old Testament. She had been 
only about a year in the country, and the only language 
she could speak was Russian, which she enunciated without 
a trace of a Jewish accent or intonation. She scarcely 
understood Yiddish. All this was uncannily at variance 
with her Biblical face. It seemed incredable that her 
speech and outward appearance should belong to the same 
person. To add to the discrepancy, she was smoking 
cigarette after cigarette, a performance certainly not in 
keeping with one’s notion of a Jewish woman of the old 
type. 

The oldest two sons, Moissey and Sasha, spoke English 
with a Russian accent from which the English of all the 
other children was absolutely free. Mrs. Tevkin’s Rus- 
sian sounded more Russian than her husband’s. Emil, 
Elsie, and Gracie did not speak Russian at all. 

31 473 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 

Barring Mrs. Tevkin, each adiilt in the family wor- 
shiped at the shrine of some “ism.” Anna professed Israel 
Zangwill’s modified Zionism or Territorialism. This, how- 
ever, was merely a platonic interest with her. It took up 
little or none of her time. Her real passion was Minority , 
a struggling little magazine of “modernistic literature and 
thought.” It was published by a group of radicals of 
which she was a member. Elsie, on the other hand, who 
was a socialist, was an ardent member of the Socialist party 
and of the Socialist Press Club. Politically the two sisters 
were supposed to be irreconcilable opponents, yet Anna 
often worked in the interests of Elsie’s party. Indeed, the 
more I knew them the clearer it became to me that the 
older sister was under the infiuence of the younger. 

The two girls and their brothers had many visitors — 
socialist and anarchist writers, poets, critics, artists. These 
were of both sexes and some of them were Gentiles. Two 
of the most frequent callers were Miss Siegel and the sallow- 
faced, homely man who had danced with Anna at , the 
Rigi Kuhn pavilion. He was an instructor in an art school. 
From his talks with Emil and Anna I learned of a whole 
world whose existence I had never even suspected — ^the 
world of East Side art students, of the gifted boys among 
them, some of whom had gone to study in Paris, of their 
struggles, prospects, jealousies. 

I was introduced to several of these people, but I never 
came into sympathetic touch with them. I was ever con- 
scious, never my real self in their midst. Perhaps it was 
because they did not like me; perhaps it was because I 
failed to appreciate a certain something that was the key- 
note to their mental attitude. However that may have 
been, I always felt wretched in their company, and my 
attempts at saying something out of the common usually 
missed fire. 

Was Anna interested in any of the young men who came 
to the house? I was inclined to think that she was not, 
but I was not sure. 

Among Elsie’s closest friends or “comrades” was an 
American millionaire — a member of one of the best-known 
families in New York — and his wife, who was a Jewess, of 
whom I had read in the papers. I never saw them at the 
Tevldns’, but I knew that they occasionally called on the 

474 


AT HER FATHER’S HOUSE 

school-teacher and that she saw a good deal of them at their 
house and at various meetings, a fact the discovery of which 
produced a disheartening impression on me. It was as 
though the sole advantage I enjoyed over Anna — the pos- 
session of money — suddenly had been wiped out. 

I sometimes wondered whether at the bottom of her 
heart Elsie did not feel elated by her close relations with 
that couple. That she herself was a stranger to all money 
interests there could be no doubt, however. And this was 
true of Anna and the other children. 

Elsie and Moissey were the strongest individualities in 
the family. Theirs were truly religious natures, and so- 
cialism was their religion in the purest sense of the term. 
Elsie scarcely had any other great interest in life. Her 
socialism amused me, but her devotion to it inspired me 
with reverence. As for Moissey, good literature, as the 
term is tmderstood in Russia, was nearly as much of a pas- 
sion with him as Marxian socialism. His fervent talks of 
what he considered good fiction and his ferocious assaults 
upon what he termed “candy stories” were very impres- 
sive, though I did not always understand what he was 
talking about. Sometimes he would pick a quarrel with 
Anna over Minority and her literary hobbies generally. 
Once he brought her to tears by his attacks. I could not 
see why people should quarrel over mere stories. I thought 
Moissey crazy, but I must confess that his views on litera- 
ture were not without influence upon my tastes. I did 
not do much reading in these days, so I may not have 
become aware of it at once. But at ajater period, when 
I did do much reading, Moissey’s opinions came back to 
me and I seemed to And myself in accord with them. 

To return to my visits at the Tevldns’. ^ I told myself 
again and again that their world was not mine, that there 
was no hope for me, and that there was nothing for it but 
to discontinue my calls, but I had not the strength to do so. 
I never went away from this house otherwise than dejected 
and forlorn. 

Tevkin was charming in the fervent, yet tactful, hos- 
pitality with which he endeavored to assuage the bitterness 
of my visits. He seemed to say, ‘ T see everything, my dear 
friend, and my heart goes out to you, but how can I help 
you?” 


475 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 


His wife tried to be diplomatic. 

“American young p^ple imagine they own the earth,” 
she once said to me, with a knowing glint in her beautiful 
eyes. “Some day they’ll find out their mistake.” 

The hot months set in. The family nominally moved 
to Rockaway Beach for the season and my visits were sus- 
pended. Nominally, because Elsie and the boys and old 
Tevldn himself slept in the Harlem house more often than 
in their summer home. Elsie was wrapped up in the 
socialist campaign, which kept her busy every night from 
the middle of July to Election Day. She practically had 
no vacation. Anna made arrangements to spend her brief 
vacation with some of her literary friends who had a camp 
in Maine, but while she was in the city she came home to her 
mother and Gracie almost every evening. As for her 
father, whom I saw several times during that summer, he 
often sat up far into the night in Malbin’s or some other 
restaurant, talking “parcels.” He had become so ab- 
sorbed in his real-estate speculations that he was rarely seen 
at Yampolsky’s caf^ these days. One evening, when he 
was dining with me at the private hotel in which I lived, and 
we were discussing his ventures, he said: 

“ Do you know, my friend, I have made more than twelve 
thousand dollars?” 

He tried to say it in a matter-of-fact, business-like way, 
but his face melted into an expression of joy before he 
finished the sentence. 

“I tell it to you because I know that you are a real 
friend and that you will be sincerely glad to hear it,” he 
went on. 

“I certainly am. I’m awfully glad,” I rejoined, fer- 
vently. 

“I expect to make more. No more chipping in by the 
children! Anna shall give up her typewriting and Elsie her 
teaching. ^ Yes, things are coming my way at last.” 

“Still,^ if I were you, I should go slow. The real-estate 
market is an uncertain thing, after all.” 

“Of course it is,” he answered, mechanically. 

Since I bought that Brooklyn parcel and refused to go 
into further re^-estate operations he had never approached 
me with business schemes again. There was not the slight- 
est alloy of self-interest in his friendship, and he was careful 

476 


AT HER FATHER’S HOUSE 

not to have it appear that there was. He never initiated 
me into the details of his speculations, lest I shoidd offer 
him a loan. He was quite squeamish about it. 

One day I offered him a hundred-doUar check for The Pen, 
the Hebrew weekly with which he was connected and upon 
which I knew him to spend more than he could afford. 

‘T don’t want it,” he said, reddening and shaking his 
head. 

‘"Why?” I asked, also reddening. 

I was sorely hurt and he noticed it. 

“ I know that you do it whole-heartedly,” he hastened to 
explain, “but I don’t want to feel that you do it for my 
sake.” 

“ But I don't do it for your sake. I just want to help the 
paper. Can’t I — ” 

He interrupted me with assurances of his regard for me 
and for my motives, and accepted the check. 

Was he dreaming of Anna ultimately agreeing to marry 
me — and my money? He certainly considered me a most 
desirable match. But I felt sure that he was fond of me on 
my personal account and that he would have liked to have 
me for his son-in-law even if my income had not exceeded 
three or four thousand dollars a year. He did not share 
the radical views of his children. He was much nearer to 
my point of' view than they. 


CHAPTER V 


I T was December. There was an air of prosperity in 
Tevkin’s house, but the girls would not give up their 
jobs. I was a frequent caller again. I was burning to take 
Anna, Elsie, and their parents to the theater, but was 
afraid the two girls woidd spurn the invitation. 

One day I was agreeably stuprised by Elsie asking me to 
buy some tickets for a socialist ball. They were fifty cents 
apiece. 

“How many do you want me to take?” I asked. 

“As many as you can afford,” she answered, roguishly. 
“Will you sell me twenty-five dollars’ worth?” 

“Oh, that would be lovely!” she said, in high glee. 

When I handed her the money I was on the brink of ask- 
ing if it might not be rejected as “tainted,” but suppressed 
the pleasantry. 

For me to attend a socialist ball would have meant to 
face a crowd of union men. It was out of the question. 
But the twenty-five dollars somehow brought me nearer to 
Elsie, and that meant to Anna also. I began to feel more 
at home in their company. Elsie was as dear as a sister to 
me. I went so far as to venture to invite them and their 
parents to the opera, and my invitation was accepted. I 
was still merely “a friend of father’s,” something like an 
uncle, but I saw a ray of hope now. 

“Suppose a commonplace business man like myself of- 
fered you a check for Minority'' I once said to Anna. 

“A check for Minority?" she echoed, with joyful siu*- 
prise. “Well, it would be accepted with thanks, of course, 
but you would first have to withdraw the libel ‘ the common- 
place business man.’ Another condition is that you must 
promise to read the magazine.” 

As I was making out the check I told her that I had read 
some issues of it and that I “solemnly swore” to read it 

478 


AT HER FATHER’S HOUSE 


regularly now. That I had found it an unqualified bore 
I omitted to announce. Shortly after that opera night 
Tevkin provided a box at one of the Jewish theaters for a 
play by Jacob Gordin. 

I was quite chiunmy with the girls. They would jokingly 
call me “Mr. Capit^ist” and, despite their father’s pro- 
tests, “bleed” me for all sorts of contributions. One of 
these came near embroiling me with Moissey. It was for a 
revolutionary leader, a Jew, who had recently escaped from 
a Siberian prison in a barrel of cabbage and whose arrival in 
New York (by way of Japan and San Francisco) had been 
the great sensation of the year among the socialists of the 
East Side. The new-comer was the founder of a party of 
terrorists and had organized a plot which had resulted 
in the killing of an uncle of the Czar and of a prime min- 
ister. Now, Moissey, in his rabid, uncompromising way, 
sympathized with another party of Russian revolutionists, 
with one that was bitterly opposed to the theories and 
methods of the terrorists. So when he learned that Anna 
was collecting funds for the man who had been smuggled 
out of jail in a barrel, and that I had given her a check for 
him, he flared up and called her “busybody.” 

“You had better mind your own affairs, Moissey,” she 
retorted, coloring. 

She essayed to defend her position, contending that the 
methods of the Russian Government rendered terrorism 
not only justifiable, but inevitable. 

“The question is not whether it is justifiable, but 
whether there is any sense to it,” Moissey replied, 
sneeringly. “Revolutions are not made by plotting or 
bomb-throwing. They must take the form of an uprising 
by the masses.” 

“As if the Russian terrorists did not have the masses 
back of them! The peasantry and the educated classes are 
with them.” 

“How do you know they are?” Moissey asked, with a 
good-natttred, but patronizing, smile. 

He spoke of the Russian working class as the great ele- 
ment that was destined to work out the political and 
economic salvation of the country, and at this he tactlessly 
dwelt on the Russian trade-unions, on what he termed their 
revolutionary strikes, and upon the aid Russian capitalists 

479 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 

gave the Government in its crusade upon the struggle for 
liberty. 

I felt quite awkward. I wondered whether he was not 
sa5dng these things designedly to punish me for the check 
I had given Anna for the terrorists. He had always seemed 
to hold aloof from me, as if he were opposed to the visits of 
the “money-bag” that I was at his father’s house. At this 
minute I felt as though his eyes said, “The idea of this 
fleecer of labor contributing to the struggle for liberty!” 

I was burning to tell him that he lacked manners, and to 
assail trade-unionism, but I restrained myself, of course. 

Sometimes the girls and I would discuss the social ques- 
tion or literature, subjects upon which they assured me that 
I held “naive” views. But all my efforts to get Anna into 
a more intimate conversation failed. For all our familiarity, 
it seemed as if we held our conversations through a thick 
window-pane. Nevertheless, in a very vague way, and for 
no particular reason that I was aware of, I thought that I 
sensed encoiu*agement. 

Tevkin never again approached me with his real-estate 
ventures, but the very air of his house these days was fiill 
of such ventures. I met other real-estate men at his home. 
Their talk was tempting, my enormous income notwith- 
standing. Huge fortunes seemed to be growing like mush- 
rooms all over the five Ghettos of New York and Brooklyn. 
I saw men who three years ago had not been worth a cent 
and who were now buying and selling blocks of property. 
How much they were actually worth was a question which in 
the excitement of the “boom” did not seem to matter. It 
is never a rare incident among our people for a man with a 
nebulous fortune of a few hundred dollars to plunge into a 
commercial undertaking involving many thousands; but 
during that period this was an every-day affair. At first 
I treated it like something that was going on in another 
country. But I had a good deal of uninvested money and 
my resistance was slackening. 

At last I succumbed. 

One of the men I met at Tevkin’s was Volodsky, the old- 
time street peddler, the man of the beautiful teeth whose 
push-cart had adjoined mine in those gloomy days when I 
tried to sell goods in the streets, and who had told me of the 
dower-money which his sister had lent him for his journey 

480 


AT HER FATHER’S HOUSE 

to America. I had not seen him since then — an interval of 
oyer twenty years — and we recognized each other with some 
difficulty. 

The real-estate boom had found him eking out a wretched 
livelihood by selling goods on the instalment plan. Most 
of his business had been in the Italian quarter and he had 
learned to speak Italian far more fluently than he had 
English. A short time before I stumbled upon him at the 
Tevkins’ he had built an enormous block of high, brick 
apartment-houses in Harlem. He had gone into the un- 
dertaking with only five thousand dollars of his own, and 
before the houses were half completed he had sold them all, 
pocketing an enormous profit. When w.e were peddlers 
together he had been considered a failure and a fool. He 
now struck me as a clever fellow, full of dash. 

Nor did Volodsky represent the only metamorphosis of 
this kind that I came across. It was as though there were 
something in the atmosphere which turned paupers into 
capitalists and inane milksops into men of brains and 
pluck. Volodsky succeeded in luring me into a network of 
speculations. 

Tevldn had an interest in some of these operations, and, 
as they were mostly concerned with property in Harlem or 
in the Bronx, his house became my real-estate headquarters. 
There were two classes of callers at his home now: the 
socialists and the literary men or artists who visited 
Tevkin’s children and the “real-estate crowd’’ who came to 
see Tevkin himself. It came to be tacitly understood that 
the library was to be left to the former, while the dining- 
room, in the basement, was used as Tevkin’s office. Being 
“a friend of the family,” I had the freedom of both. 

“You’re making a big mistake, Levinsky,” Nodelman 
once said to me, with a gesture of deep concern. “What 
is biting you? i^ren’t you making money fast enough? 
Mark my word, if you try to swallow too fast you’U choke. 
Any doctor will tell you that.” 

I urged him to join me, but he would not hear of it. 
Instead he exhorted me to sell out my holdings and give all 
my attention to my cloak business. 

“Take pity on your hard-earned pennies, Levinsky,” 
he would say. “Else you’ll wake up some day like the 
fellow who has dreamed he has found a treasure. He’s 

481 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 

holding on to the treasure tight, and when he opens his 
eyes he finds it’s nothing but a handful of wind.” 

“I’ll tell you what, Levinsky,” he began on one occa- 
sion. “You ought to see some of those magician fellows.” 

“What for?” I asked. 

“Did you ever see them at their game? They’ll put 
an egg into a hat; say, ‘One, two, thiee,’ and pull out a 
chicken. And then they say, ‘One, two, three,’ again and 
there’s neither a chicken nor an egg. That’s the way all 
this real-estate racket will end. Mark my word, Levinsky. ’ ’ 

Bender nagged and pleaded with me without let-up. If 
I had had the remotest doubt of his devotion to me it would 
have been dispelled now. I was at my great mahogany 
desk every morning, as usual, but I seldom stayed more than 
two hours, and even during those two hours my mind was 
divided between cloaks and real estate or between cloaks 
and Anna. Bender was practically in full charge of the 
business. Instead, however, of welcoming the power it 
gave him, he made unrelenting efforts to restore things to 
their former state. He was constantly haranguing me on 
the risks I was incurring, beseeching me to drop my new 
ventures, and threatening to leave me unless I did so. 
Once, as he was thus expostulating with me, he broke down. 

“ I appeal to you as your friend, as your old-time teacher,” 
he said, and burst into tears. 

If it had not been for him I should have neglected my 
cloak business beyond repair. He handled me as a gam- 
bler’s wife does her husband. He would seek me out in 
front of some unfinished building, at Tevkin’s, or at some 
“boom” cafd, and make me sign some checks, consult me on 
something or other, or wheedle me into accompanying him 
to my factory for an hour or two. But the next day he 
would have to go hunting for me again. 

I had invested considerable money in my new affairs, 
and releasing it at short notice would not have been an easy 
matter. But the great point was that I was literally in- 
toxicated by my new interests, and the fact that they were 
intimately associated with the atmosphere of Anna’s home 
had much — perhaps everything — to do with it. 

I loved her to insanity. She was the supreme desire of 
my being. I knew that she was weaker in character and 
mind than Elsie, for example, but that seemed to be a point 

482 


AT HER FATHER’S HOUSE 

in her favor rather than against her. “She is a good girl,” 
I would muse, “mild, kindly, girlish. As for her ‘radical’ 
notions, they really don’t matter much. I could easily 
knock them out of her. I should be happy with her. Oh, 
how happy!” 

^ And, in spite of the fact that I thought her weak, the 
sight of her would fill me with awe. 

One’^ first love is said to be the most passionate love of 
which one is capable. I do not think it is. I think my 
feeling for Anna was stronger, deeper, more tender, and 
more overpowering than either of my previous two in- 
fatuations. But then, of course, there is no way of measur- 
ing and comparing things of this kind. Anna was the first 
virgin I had ever loved. Was that responsible for the 
particular depth of my feeling? 

“Oh, I must have her or I’ll fall to pieces,” I would say 
to myself, yearning and groaning and whining like a 
lunatic. 

My gambling mania was really the aberration of a love- 
maddened brain. How could Bender or Nodelman under- 
stand it? 

I found myself in the midst of other lunatics, of men v/ho 
had simply been knocked out of balance by the suddenness 
of their gains. My money had come slowly and through 
work and worry. Theirs had dropped from the sky. So 
they could scarcely believe their senses that it was not all 
a dream. They were hysterical with gleeful amazement; 
they were in a delirium of ecstasy over themselves; and 
at the same time they looked as though they were tempted 
to feel their own faces and hands to make sure that they 
were real. 

One evening I saw a man whose family was still living on 
fifteen dollars a week lose more than six hundred dollars 
in poker and then take a group of congenial spirits out for a 
spree that cost him a few hundred dollars more. One man 
in this party, who was said to be worth three-quarters of a 
million, had only recently worked as a common brick- 
layer. He is fixed in my memory by his struggles to live 
up to his new position, more especially by the efforts he 
would make to break himself of certain habits of speech. 
He always seemed to be on his guard lest some coarse word 
or phrase should escape him, and when a foul expression 

483 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 


eluded his vigilance he would give a start, as if he had broken 
something. There was often a wistful look in his eye, as 
if he wondered whether his wealth and new mode of living 
were not merely a cruel practical joke. Or was he yearning 
for the simpler and more natural life which he had led 
imtil two years ago? We had many an expensive meal to- 
gether, and often, as he ate, he would say: 

“Oh, it’s all nonsense, Mr. Levinsky. a 11 this fussy 
stuff does not come up to one spoon of my wife’s cabbage 
soup.” 

Once he said: “Do you really like champagne? I 
don’t. You may say I am a common, ignorant fellow, but 
to me it doesn’t come up to the bread cider mother used to 
make. Honest.” And he gave a chuckle. 

I knew a man who bought a thousand-dollar fur coat and 
a full-dress suit before he had learned to use a handkerchief. 
He always had one in his pocket, but he would handle it 
gingerly, as if he had not the heart to soil it, and then he 
would carefully fold it again. The effect money had on this 
man was of quite another nature than it was in the case of 
the bricklayer. It had made him boisterously arrogant, 
blusteringly disdainful of his intellectual superiors, and 
brazenly foul-mouthed. It was as though he was shouting : 
“I don’t have to fear or respect anybody now! I have got 
a lot of money. I can do as I damn please.” More than 
one pure man became dissolute in the riot of easily gotten 
wealth. A real-estate speculator once hinted to me, in a 
fit of drunken confidence, that his wife, hitherto a good 
woman and a simple home body, had gone astray through 
the new vistas of hfe that had suddenly been flung open to 
her. One fellow who was naturally truthful was rapidly 
becoming a liar through the practice of exaggerating his 
profits and expenditures. There was an abtmdance of side- 
splitting comedy in the things I saw about me, but there 
was no dearth of pathos, either. One day, as I entered a 
certain high-class restaurant on Broadway, I saw at one 
of the tables a man who looked strikingly familiar to me, 
but whom I was at first unable to locate. Presently I 
recognized him. Three or four years before he had peddled 
apples among the employees of my doak-shop. He had 
then been literally in tatters. That was why I was now 
slow to connect his former image with his present surround- 

484 


AT HER FATHER’S HOUSE 

ings. I had heard of his windfall. He had had a job as 
watchman at houses in process of construction. While 
there he had noticed things, overheard conversations, put 
two and two together, and finally made fifty thousand dol- 
lars in a few months as a real-estate broker. 

We were furtively eying each other. Finally our eyes 
met. He greeted me with a respectful nod and then his 
face broke into a good-humored smile. He moved over 
to my table and told me his story in detail. He spoke in 
brief, pithy sentences, revealing a remarkable understand- 
ing of the world. In conclusion he said, with a sigh: 

“But what is the good of it all? The Upper One has 
blessed me with one hand, but He has ptmished me with 
the other.” 

It appeared that his wife had died, in Austria, just when 
she was about to come to join him and he was preparing 
to surprise her with what, to her, would have been a 
palatial apartment. 

“For six years I tried to bring her over, but could not 
manage it,” he said, simply. “I barely made enough to 
feed one mouth. When good luck came at last, she died. 
She was a good woman, but I never gave her a day’s hap- 
piness. For eighteen years she shared my poverty. And 
now, that there is something better to share, she is gone.” 


CHAPTER VI 


O NE of the many Jewish immigrants who were drawn 
into the whirl of real-estate speculation was Max 
Margolis, Dora’s husband. I had heard his name in con- 
nection with some deals, and one afternoon 'in February 
we found ourselves side by side in a crowd of other “boom- 
ers.” The scene was the comer of Fifth Avenue and One 
Hundred and Sixteenth Street, two blocks from Tevkin’s 
residence, a spot that usually swarmed with Yiddish- 
spealdng real-estate speculators in those days. It was a 
gesticulating, jabbering, whispering, excited throng, re- 
sembling the crowd of curb-brokers on Broad Street. 
Hence the nickname “The Curb” by which that corner was 
getting to be known. 

I was talking to Tevkin when somebody slapped me on 
the back. 

‘ ‘ Hello, Levinsky ! Hello !” 

“Margolis!” 

His face had the florid hue of worn, nervous, middle age. 
“I heard you were buying. Is it true? Well, how goes 
it, great man?” 

“How have you been?” 

“Can’t kick. Of course, compared to a big fellow like 
David Levinsky, I am a fly.” 

I excused myself to Tevkin and took Margolis to the 
quieter side of the Avenue. 

“Glad to see you, upon my word,” he said. “Well, 
let bygones by bygones. It’s about time we forgot 
it all.” 

“There is nothing to forget.” 

“Honest?” 

“Honest! Is that idiotic notion still sticking in your 
brain?” 

“ Why, no. Not at all. May I not live till to-morrow if 
486 


AT HER FATHER’S HOUSE 

it does. You are not angry at me, are you? Come, now, 
say that you are not.” 

I smiled and shrugged my shoulders. 

“Well, shake hands, then.” 

We did and he offered to sell me a “parcel.” As I 
did not care for it, he went on to talk of the real-estate 
market in general. There was a restaurant on that side of 
the block — The Curb Cafe we used to call it — so we went 
in, ordered something, and he continued to talk. He was 
plainly striving to sound me, in the hope of “hanging on” 
to some of my deals. Of a sudden he said: 

“Say, you must think I’m still jealous? May I not live 
till to-morrow if I am.” And to prove that he was not he 
added: “Come, Levinsky, come up to the house and let’s 
be friends again, as we used to be. I have always wished 
you well.” He gave me his address. “Will you come?” 

“Some day.” 

“You aren’t still angry at Dora, are you?” 

“Why, no. But then she may be still angry at me,” 
I said, indifferently. 

“Nonsense. Perhaps it is beneath your dignity to call 
on small people like us? Come, forget that you are a great 
capitalist and let us all spend an evening together as we 
used to.” 

Was he ready to suppress his jealousy for the prospect 
of getting under my financial wing? The answer to this 
question came to me through a most unexpected channel. 

The next morning, when I came to my Fifth Avenue 
office (it was some eighty blocks — about four miles — down- 
town from “The Curb” section of Fifth Avenue), I found 
Dora waiting for me. I recognized her the moment I 
entered the waiting-room on my office floor. Her hair was 
almost white and she had grown rather fleshy, but her face 
had not changed. She wore a large, becoming hat and 
was quite neatly dressed generally. 

The blood surged to my face. Her presence was a be- 
wildering surprise to me. 

There were three other people in the room and I had to 
be on my guard. 

“How are you?” I said, rushing over to her. 

She stood up and we shook hands. I took her into my 
private office through my private corridor. 

487 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 


“Dora! Well, well!” I mtirmtired in a deliritim of em- 
barrassment. 

“ I have come to tell you not to mind Margolis and not to 
call at the house,” she said, gravely, looking me full in the 
face. “It would be awful if you did. He is out of his 
mind. He is — ” 

“Wait a minute, Dora,” I interrupted her. “There’ll 
be plenty of time to talk of that. First tell me something 
about yourself. How have you been? How are the 
children?” 

She was like an old song that had once held me under its 
sway, but which now appealed to me as a memory only. I 
was conscious of my consuming passion for Anna. Dora 
interested and annoyed me at once. 

I treated her as a dear old friend. She, however, per- 
sisted in wearing a mask of politeness, as if she had come 
strictly on business and there had never been any other 
relations between us. 

“Everybody is all right, thank you,” she answered. 

“Is Lucy married ? ’ ’ 

“Oh, she has a beautiful little girl of two years. But 
I do want to tell you about Margolis. The man is simply 
crazy, and I want to warn you not to take him seriously. 
Above all, don’t let him take you up to the house. Not for 
anything in the world. That’s what brings me here this 
morning.” 

“Why? What’s the trouble?” 

“Oh, it would take too long to tell,” she answered. 
“And it isn’t important, either. The main thing is that 
you should not let him get into business relations with you, 
or into any other kind of relations, for that matter.” 

Her English was a striking improvement upon what it 
had been sixteen years before. As we continued to talk 
it became evident to me that she was a well-read, well- 
informed woman. I made some efforts to break her re- 
serve, but they failed. Nor, indeed, was I over-anxious to 
have them succeed. She did speak of her husband’s 
jealousy, however (though she dropped her glance and 
slurred over the word as she did so) ; and from what she 
said, as well as by reading between the lines of her state- 
ment, I gathered a fairly clear picture of the situation. 
Echoes of Max’s old jealousy would still make themselves 

488 


AT HER FATHER’S HOUSE 

felt in his domestic life. A clash, an irritation, would some- 
times bring my name to his lips. He still, sometimes, tor- 
tured her with questions concerning our relations. 

“I never answer these questions of his,” she said, her 
eyes on my office rug. “Not a word. I just let him talk. 
But sometimes I feel like putting an end to my life,” she 
concluded, with a smile. 

I listened with expressions of surprise and sympathy and 
with a feeling of compunction. A thought was sluggishly 
trailing through my mind: “Does she still care for me?” 

Margolis had built up some sort of auction business, 
but his real-estate mania had ruined it and eaten up all he 
had except three thousand dollars, which Dora had con- 
trived to save from the wreck. With this she had bought a 
cigar-and-stationery store on Washington Heights by means 
of which she now supported the family. He spent his days 
and evenings hanging around real-estate haunts as a penni- 
less drunkard does around liquor-shops. He was ^ways 
importuning Dora for “a couple of hundred dollars” for 
a “sure thing.” This was often the cause of an altercation. 
Quarrels had, in fact, never been such a frequent occur- 
rence in the house as they had been since he lost his money 
in real estate, and one of his favorite thrusts in the course 
of these brawls was to allude to me. 

“If Levinsky asked you for money you would not refuse 
him, would you?” he would taunt her. 

Now, that he had met me at “The Curb, ” he had taken 
it into his head that his jealousy had worn off long since 
and that he had the best of feelings for me. His heart 
was set upon regaining my friendship. He had spoken 
to her of oiu* meeting as a “predestined thing” that was to 
result in my “letting him in” on some of my deals. Dora, 
however, felt sure that a renewal of our acquaintance would 
only rekindle the worst forms of his jealousy and make life 
impossible to her. She dreaded to imagine it. 

We spoke of Lucy again. It was so stirring to think of 
her as a mother. Dora told me that Lucy’s husband was 
in the jewelry business and quite well-to-do. 

She rose to go. I escorted her, continuing to question 
her about Lucy, Dannie, her husband. It woidd have been 
natural for me to take her out by way of my private little 
corridor, but I preferred to pilot her through my luxurious 
32 48Q 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 

show-rooms. We found two customers there to whom 
some of my office men and a designer were showing our 
“line.” I greeted the customers, and, tirming to Dora 
again, I asked her to finish an interrupted remark. We 
paused by one of the windows. What she was saying about 
Lucy was beginning to puzzle me. She did not seem to be 
pleased with her daughter’s marriage. 

“She has three servants and a machine,” she said, with 
a peculiar smile. “She wanted it and she got what she 
wanted.” 

“Why?” I said, perplexed. 

“Everything is all right,” she answered, with another 
smile. 

We spoke in an imdertone, so that nobody could over- 
hear us. The fact, however, that we were no longer alone 
had the effect of relieving our constraint. Dora unbent 
somewhat. A certain note of intimacy that had been 
lacking in oiu* talk while we were by oiu^elves stole into it 
now that we were in the presence of other people. 

In the course of our love-affair she had often spoken 
to me of her determination not to let Lucy repeat her mis- 
take, not to let her marry otherwise than a man she loved. 
We were both thinking of it at this minute, and it seemed 
to be tacitly understood between us that we were. 

At last I venttued to ask: “What’s the trouble, Dora? 
Tell me all about it. It interests me very much.” 

“I don’t know whether there’s an5rthing to tell,” she 
answered, coloring slightly. “She says she cares for her 
husband, and they really get along very well. He certainly 
worships her. Why shoiddn’t he? She is so beautiful — a. 
regular flower — ^and he is old enough to be her father.” 

“You don’t say!” I ejaculated, with genuine distress. 

*'She is satisfied.” 

“Are ymir 

“As if it mattered whether I was or not. I had other 
ideas about her happiness, but I am only a mother and was 
not even bom in this country. So what does my opinion 
amount to? I begged her not to break my heart, but she 
would have her automobile.” 

“Perhaps she does love him.” 

I ^ She shook her head mefully . ‘ ‘ She was quite frank about 

it. She called it being practical. She thought my ideas 

490 


AT HER FATHER’S HOUSE 


weren’t American, that I was a dreamer. She talked that 
way ever since she was eighteen, in fact. T don’t care if 
I marry a man with white hair, provided he can make a nice 
living for me,’ she used to say. I thought it wotild drive 
me mad. And the girls she went with had the same ideas. 
When they got together it would be, ‘This girl married a 
fellow who’s worth a hundred thousand,’ and, ‘That girl 
goes with a fellow who’s worth half a million.’ If that’s 
what they learn at college, what’s the use going to college?” 

“It’s prosperity ideas,” I suggested. “It’s a temporary 
craze.” 

“I don’t care what it is. A girl should be a girl. She 
ought to think of love, of real happiness.” (Her glance 
seemed to be the least bit unsteady.) “But I ain’t ‘prac- 
tical,’ don’t you know. Exactly what my mother — peace 
upon her [this in Hebrew] — used to say. She, too, did not 
think it was necessary to be in love with the man you marry. 
But then she did not go to college, not even to school. 
Of what good is education, then?” 

It was evident that she spoke from an overflowing 
neart, and that she could speak for hours on the subject. 
But she cut herself short and took another tack. 

“You must not think her husband is a kike, though,” 
she said. “He is no fool and he writes a pretty good 
English letter. And he is a very nice man.” 

She started to go. 

“Tell me some more about Dannie,” I said, on our way 
to the elevator. 

“He’s going to college. Always first or second in his 
class. And one of the best men on the football team, too.” 
She smiled, the first radiant smile I had seen on her that 
morning. 

“He’s aU right,” she continued. And in Yiddish, “He 
is my only consolation.” And again in English, “If it 
wasn’t for him hfe wouldn’t be worth living. Good-by,” 
she said, as we paused in front of the elevator door. “Don’t 
forget what I told you.” She was ill at ease again. 

The elevator came down from the upper floors. We 
shook hands and she entered it. It sank out of sight. I 
stood still for a second and then returned to my private 
office with a sense of relief and sadness. My heart was full 
of love for Anna. 

491 


CHAPTER VII 


J N a vague, timid way I had been planning to propose 
to Anna all along. My meeting with Dora gave these 
plans shape. Her unexpected visit revived in my mind 
the whole history of my acquaintance with her. I said 
to myself: “It was through tenacity and persistence 
that I won her. It was persistence, too, that gave me 
success in business. Anna is a meek, good-natured girl. 
She has far less backbone than Dora. I can win her, and 
I will.” 

It seemed so convincing. It was like a discovery. It 
aroused the fighting blood in my veins. I was throbbing 
with love and determination. I was priming myself for a 
formal proposal. I expected to take her by storm. I was 
only waiting for an opportimity. In case she said no, I 
was prepared for a long and vigorous campaign. “I won’t 
give her up. She shall be mine, whether she wants it or 
not,” I said to myself again and again. These soliloquies 
would go on in my mind at all hours and in all kinds of 
circumstances — while I was pushing my way through a 
crowded street-car, while I was listening to some of Ben- 
der’s scoldings, while I was parleying with some real- 
estate man over a piece of property. They often made 
me so absent-minded that I would pace the floor of my 
hotel room, for instance, with one foot socked and the 
other bare, and then distressedly search for the other sock, 
which was in my hand. One morning as I sat at my ma- 
hogany desk in my office, with the telephone receiver to my 
ear, waiting to be connected with a banker, I said to 
myself: “Women like a man with a strong will. My very 
persistence will fascinate her.” And this, too, seemed like 
a discovery to me. The banker answered my call. It 
was an important matter, yet all the while I spoke or lis- 
tened to him I was conscious of having hit upon an in- 
492 


AT HER FATHER’S HOUSE 

vincible argument in support of my hope that Anna would 
be mine. 

At last I thought I saw my opportunity. It was an 
evening in April. According to the Jewish calendar it was 
the first Passover night, when Israel’s liberation from the 
bondage of Egypt is commemorated by a feast and a family 
reunion which form the greatest event in the domestic life 
of oiu* people. 

Two years before, when I was engaged to Fanny, I 
deeply regretted not being able to spend the great evening 
at her father’s table. This time I was an invited guest at 
the Tevkins’. They were not a religious family by any 
means. Tevkin had been a free-thinker since his early 
manhood, and his wife, the daughter of the Jewish Inger- 
soll, had been bom and bred in an atmosphere of aggressive 
atheism. And so religious faith never had been known in 
their house. Of late years, however — that is, since Tevkin 
had espoused the cause of Zionism or nationalism — ^he had 
insisted on the Passover feast every year. He contended 
that to him it was not a religious ceremony, but merely a 
“national custom,” but about this his children were be- 
ginning to have their doubts. It seemed to them that the 
older their father grew the less sure he was of his free 
thought. They suspected that he was getting timid about 
it, fearful of the hereafter. As a rule, they saw only the 
humorous side of the change that was apparently coming 
over him, but sometimes they would awaken to the pathos 
of it. 

As we all sat in the library, waiting to be called to the 
great feast, he delivered himself of a witticism at the expense 
of the prospective ceremony. 

“You needn’t take his atheism seriously, Mr. Levinsky,” 
said Anna, the sound of my name on her lips sending a 
thrill of delight through me. “ ’Way down at the bottom 
of his heart father is getting to be really religious, I’m 
afraid.” And, as though taking pity on him, she crossed 
over to where he sat and nestled up to him in a manner 
that put a choking sensation into my throat and filled me 
with an impulse to embrace them both. 

At last the signal was given and we filed down into the 
dining-room. A long table, flanked by two rows of chairs, 
with a sofa, instead of the usual arm-chair, at its head, 

40 ^ 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 

was set with bottles of wine, bottles of mead, wine-glasses, 
and little piles of matzos (thin, fiat cakes of unleavened 
bread). The sofa was cushioned with two huge Russian 
pillows, inclosed in fresh white cases, for the master of the 
house to lean on, in commemoration of the freedom and 
ease which came to the Children of Israel upon their de- 
liverance from Egypt. Placed on three covered matzos, 
within easy reach of the master, were a shank bone, an 
egg, some horseradish, salt water, and a mush made of 
nuts and wine. These were symbols, the shank bone being 
a memorial of the paschal lamb, and the egg of the other 
sacrifices brought during the festival in ancient times, while 
the horseradish and the salt water represented the bitter 
work that the Sons of Israel had to do for Pharaoh, and the 
mush the lime and mortar from which they made brick for 
him. A small book lay in front of each seat. That was 
the Story of the Deliverance, in the ancient Hebrew text, 
accompanied by an English translation. 

Moissey, the uncompromising atheist and International- 
ist, was demonstratively absent, much to the distress of his 
mother and resentment of his father. His Biblical-looking 
wife was at the table. So were Elsie and Emil. They were 
as uncompromising in their atheism as Moissey, but they 
had consented to attend the quaint supper to please their 
parents. As to Anna, Sasha, and George, each of them had 
his or her socialism “diluted” with some species of na- 
tionalism, so they were here as a matter of principle, their 
theory being that the Passover feast was one of the things 
that emphasized the unity of the Jews of all countries. 
But even they, and even Tevkin himself, treated it all 
partly as a joke. In the case of the poet, however, it was 
quite obvious that his levity was pretended. For aU his 
jesting and frivoHty, he looked nervous. I cotdd almost 
see the memories of his childhood days which the scene 
evoked in his mind. I could feel the solemnity that 
swelled his heart. It appeared that this time he had de- 
cided to add to the ceremony certain features which he had 
foregone on the previous few Passover festivals he had 
observed. He was now bent upon having a Passover 
feast service precisely like the one he had seen his father 
conduct, not omitting even the white shroud which his 
father had worn on the occasion. As a consequence, 

494 


AT HER FATHER’S HOUSE 

several of these details were a novel sight to his children. 
A white^ shroud lay ready for him on his sofa, and as he 
slipped it on, with smiles and blushes, there was an out- 
burst of mirth. 

“Oh, daddy!” Anna shouted. 

“Father looks like a Catholic priest,” said Emil. 

“Don’t say that, Emil,” I rebuked him. 

Fun was made of the big white pillows upon which 
Tevkin leaned, “king-like,” and of the piece of unleavened 
bread which he “hid” under them for Gracie to “steal.” 

As he raised the first of the Four Cups of wine he said, 
solemnly, with an effort of shaking off all pretense of 
flippancy: 

“Well, let us raise our glasses. Let us drink the First 
Cup.” 

We all did so, and he added, “This is the Fourth of July 
of our imhappy people.” 

After the glasses were drained and refilled he said: 
“Scenes like this bind us to the Jews of the whole world, 
and not only to those living, but to the past generations 
as well. This is no time for speaking of the Christian re-;*: 
ligion, but as I look at this wine an idea strikes me whicfi 
I cannot help submitting: The Christians drink wine, im- 
agining that it is the blood of Jesus. Well, the wine we 
are drinking to-night reminds me of the martyr blood of 
our massacred brethren of all ages.” 

Anna gave me a merry wink. I felt myself one of the 
family. I was in the seventh heaven. She seemed to be 
particularly attentive to me this evening. 

“I shall speak to her to-night,” I decided. “I sha’n’t 
wait another day.” And the fact that she was a nation- 
alist and not an unqualified socialist, like Elsie, for instance, 
seemed to me a new source of encouragement. 

I was in a quiver of blissful excitement. 

The Four Questions are usually asked by the youngest 
son, but Emil, the Internationalist, could not be expected 
to take an active part in the ceremony, so Sasha, the 
Zionist, took his place. Sasha, however, did not read 
Hebrew, and old Tevkin had to be content with having the 
Four Questions read in English, the general answer to them 
being given by Tevkin and myself in Hebrew. It reminded 
me of an operatic performance in which the part of Faust, 

495 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 


for instance, is sung in French, while that of Margarita is 
performed in some other language. We went on with the 
Story of the Deliverance. Tevkin made frequent pauses 
to explain and comment upon the text, often with a bmst 
of oratory. Mrs. Tevkin and some of the children were 
obviously bored. Grade pleaded hunger. 

Finally the end of the first part of the story was reached 
and supper was served. It was a typical Passover supper, 
with matzo balls, and it was an excellent repast. Every- 
body was talkative and gay. I addressed some remarks 
to Anna, and she received them all cordially. 

By way of attesting her recognition of Passover as a 
“national holiday” she was in festive array, wearing her 
newest dress, a garment of blue taffeta embroidered in old 
rose, with a cr^pe collar of gray. It mellowed the glow of 
her healthful pink complexion. She was the most beautiful 
creature at the table, excluding neither her picturesque 
younger brother nor her majestic old mother. She shone. 
She flooded my soul with ecstasy. 

‘Tevkin’s religion was Judaism, Zionism. Mine was Anna. 

The second half of the story is usually read with less 
pomp and circumstance than the first, many a passage in it 
being often skipped altogether. So Tevlan dismissed us 
all, remaining alone at the table to chant the three final 
ballads, which he had characterized to his children as 
“charming bits of folk-lore.” 

When Mrs. Tevkin, the children, and myself were 
mounting the stairs leading up from the dining-room, I 
was by Anna’s side, my nerves as taut as those of a soldier 
waiting for the command to charge. I charged sooner than 
I expected. 

“Sasha asked the Four Questions,” I found myself say- 
ing. “There is one question which I should like to ask of 
you. Miss Tevkin.” 

I said it so simply and at a moment so little suited to a 
proposal of marriage that the trend of my words was lost 
upon her. 

“Something about Jewish nationalism?” she asked. 

“About that and about something else.” 

We were passing through the hallway now. When we 
entered the library I took her into a comer, and before we 
were seated I said: 


496 


AT HER FATHER’S HOUSE 

^ “Well, my question has really nothing to do with na- 
tionalism. It’s quite another thing I want to ask of you. 
Don’t refuse me. Marry me. Make me happy.’’ 

She listened like one stunned. 

“I am terribly in love with you,” I added. 

“Oh!” she then exclaimed. Her delicate pink skin be- 
came a fiery red. She looked down and shook her head vdth 
confused stiffness. 

“I see you’re taken aback. Take a seat; get your bear- 
ings,” I said, lightly, pulling up a chair that stood near by, 
“and say, ‘Yes.’ ” 

“Why, that’s impossible!” she said, with an awkward 
smile, without seating herself. “I need not tell you that I 
have long since changed my mind about you — ” 

“I am no more repellent, am I?” I jested. 

“No. Not at aU,” she returned, with another smile. 
“But what you say is quite another thing. I am very 
sorry, indeed.” 

She made to move away from me, but I checked her. 

“That does not discourage me,” I said. “I’ll just go 
on loving you and waiting for a favorable answer. You 
are still unjust to me. You don’t know me well enough. 
Anyhow, I can’t give you up. I won’t give you up.” 
(“That’s it,” I thought. “I am speaking like a man of 
firm purpose.”) “I am resolved to win you.” 

“Oh, that’s entirely out of the question,” she said, with 
a gesture of impatience and finality. And, bursting into 
tears of child-like indignation, she added: “Father as- 
sured me you would never hint at such a thing — never. If 
you mean to persist, then — ” 

The sentence was left eloquently unfinished. She turned 
away, walked over to her mother and took a seat by her 
side, like a Httle girl mutely seeking her mamma’s pro- 
tection. 

The room seemed to be in a whirl. I felt the cold perspi- 
ration break out on my forehead. I was conscious of Mrs. 
Tevkin’s and Elsie’s glances. I was sick at heart. Anna’s 
bitter resentment was a black surprise to me. I had a 
crushing sense of final defeat. 


I 


1 


BOOK XIV 

EPISODES OF A LONELY LIFE 


( 

I 






CHAPTER I 


I T was a severe blow. It caused me indescribable suf- 
fering. 

It would not have been imnatural to attribute my fiasco 
to my age. Had I been ten years younger, Anna’s attitude 
toward me might have been different. But this point of 
view I loathed to accept. Instead, I put the blame on 
Anna’s environment. “I was in the ‘enemy’s cotmtry’ 
there,” I would muse. “The atmosphere arotmd her was 
against me.” 

I hated the socialists with a novel venom. 

Finally I pulled myself together. Then it was that I 
discovered the real condition of my affairs. I had gone 
into those speculations far deeper than I could afford. 
There were indications that made me seriously uneasy. 
Things were even worse than Bender imagined. Ruin 
stared me in the face. I was panic-stricken. 

One day I had the head of a large woolen concern lunch 
with me in a private dining-room of a well-known hotel. 
He was dignifiedly steel-gray and he had the appearance of 
a college professor or successful physician rather than of a 
business man. He liked me. I had long been one of his 
most important customers and I had ^ways sought to 
build up a good record with him. For example: other 
cloak-manufacturers would exact allowances for merchan- 
dise that proved to have some imperfection. I never do so. 
It is the rule of my house never to put in a claim for such 
things. In the majority of cases the goods can be cut so 
as to avoid any loss of material, and if it cannot, I will sus- 
tain the small loss rather than incur the mill’s disfavor. 
In the long run it pays. And so this cloth merchant was 
well disposed toward me. He had done me some favors 
before. He addressed me as Dave. (There was a note of 
condescension as well as of admiration in this “Dave” of 

SOI 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 

his. It implied that I was a shrewd fellow and an excellent 
customer, singularly succ. ssful and reliable, but that I was 
his inferior, aU the same — a Jew, a social pariah. At the 
bottom of my heart I considered myself his superior, 
finding an amusing discrepancy between his professorial 
face and the crudity of his intellectual interests; but he was 
a Gentile, and an American, and a much wealthier man than 
I, so I looked up to him.) 

To make my appe^ as effective as possible I initiated 
him into the human side of my troubles. I told him of my 
unfortunate courtship as weU as of the real-estate ventures 
into which it had led me. 

He was interested and moved, and, as he had confidence 
in me, he granted my request at once. 

“It’s all right, Dave,” he said, slapping my back, a queer 
look in his eye. “You can always count on me. Only 
throw that girl out of your mind.” 

I grasped his hand silently. I wanted to say something, 
but the words stuck in my throat. 

He helped me out of my difficulties and I devoted myself 
to the cloak business with fresh energy. The agonies of 
my love for Anna were more persistent than those I had 
suffered after I moved out of Dora’s house. But, somehow, 
instead of interfering with my business activities, these 
agonies stimulated them. I was like the victim of a tooth- 
ache who seeks relief in hard work. I toiled day and night, 
entering into the minutest detail of the business and per- 
forming duties that were ordinarily left to some inferior 
employee. 

Business was good. Things went humming. Bender, 
who now had an interest in my factory, was happy. 

Some time later the same woolen man who had come to 
my assistance did me another good turn, one that brought 
me a rich harvest of profits. A certain weave was in great 
vogue that season, the demand far exceeding the output, 
and it so happened that the mill of the man with the 
professorial face was one of the very few that produced that 
fabric. So he let me have a much larger supply of it than 
any other cloak-manufacturer in the country was able to 
obtain. My business then took a great leap, while my 
overhead expenses remained the same. My net profits 
exceeded two hundred thousand dollars that year. 

502 


EPISODES OF A LONELY LIFE 

One afternoon in the summer of the same year, as I 
walked along Broadway in the vicinity of Canal Street, my 
attention was attracted by a shabby, white-haired, feeble- 
looking old peddler, with a wide, sneering mouth, who 
seemed disquietingly familiar and in whom I gradually 
recognized one of my Antomir teachers — one of those who 
used to punish me for the sins of their other pupils. The 
past suddenly sprang into life with detailed, colorful vivid- 
ness. The black pit of poverty in which I had been raised ; 
my misery at school, where I had been treated as an out- 
cast and a scapegoat because my mother could not afford 
even the few pennies that were charged for my tuition; 
the joy of my childish existence in spite of that gloom and 
mart3nrdom — all this rose from the dead before me. 

The poor old peddler I now saw trying to cross Broadway 
was Shmerl the Fincher, the man with whom my mother 
had a pinching and hair-piilling duel after she found the 
marks of his cruelty on my young body. He had been one 
of the most heartless of my tormentors, yet it was so 
thrillingly sweet to see him in New York! In my school- 
days I would dream of becoming a rich and influential man 
and wreaking vengeance upon my brutal • teachers, more 
especially upon Shmerl the Fincher and “the Cossack,” 
the man whose little daughter, Sarah-Leah, had been the 
heroine of my first romance. I now rushed after Shmerl, 
greatly excited, one of the feelings in my heart being a keen 
desire to help him. 

A tangle of wagons and trolley-cars caused me some de- 
lay. I stood gazing at him restively as he picked his weary 
way. I had known him as a young man, although to my 
childish eye he had looked old — a strong fellow, probably 
of twenty-eight, with jet-black side-whiskers and beard, 
with bright, black eyes and alert movements. At the time 
I saw him on Broadway he must have been about sixty, 
but he looked much older 

As I was thus* waiting impatiently for the cars to start 
so that I could cross the street and greet him, a cold, 
practical voice whispered to me: “Why court trouble? 
Leave him alone.” 

My exaltation was gone. The spell was broken. 

The block was presently relieved, but I did not stir. 
Instead of crossing the street and accosting the old man, I 

503 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 


stood still, following him with my eyes until he vanished 
from view. Then I resumed my walk up Broadway. As 
I trudged along, a feeling of compunction took hold of me. 
By way of defending myself before my conscience, I tried 
to think of the unmerited beatings he used to give me. 
But it was of no avail. The idea of avenging myself on this 
decrepit, tattered old peddler for what he had done more 
than thirty years before made me feel small. “Poor devil ! 
I must help him,” I said to myself. I was conscious of a 
desire to go back and to try to overtake him; but I did 
not. The desire was a meandering, sluggish sort of feeling. 
The spell was broken irretrievably. 


CHAPTER II 


T he following winter chance brought me together with 
Matilda. On this occasion our meeting was of a 
pleasanter nature than the one which had taken place at 
Cooper Institute. It was in a Jewish theater. She and 
another woman, accompanied by four men, one of whom was 
Matilda’s husband, were occupying a box adjoining one in 
which were the Chaikins and myself and from which it was 
separated by a low partition. The performance was given 
for the benefit of a society in which Mrs. Chaikin was an 
active member, and it was she who had made me pay for 
the box and solemnly promise to attend the performance. 
Not that I maintained a snobbish attitude toward the 
Jewish stage. I went to see Yiddish plays quite often, in 
fact, but these were all of the better class (our stage has 
made considerable headway), whereas the one that had 
been selected by Mrs. Chaiidn’s society was of the “his- 
torical-opera” variety, a hodge-podge of “ tear- wringing ” 
vaudeville and “laughter-compelling” high tragedy. I 
should have bought ten boxes of Mrs. Chaikin if she had 
only let me stay away from the performance, but her heart 
was set upon showing me off to the other members of the 
organization, and I had to come. 

It was on a Monday evening. As I entered the box 
my eyes met Matilda’s and, contrary to my will, I bowed 
to her. To my surprise, she acknowledged my salutation 
heartily. 

The curtain rose. Men in velvet tunics and plmned 
hats were saying something, but I was more conscious of 
Matilda’s proximity and of her cordial recognition of my 
nod than of what was going on on the stage. Presently a 
young man and a girl entered our box and occupied two of 
our vacant chairs. Mrs. Chaikin thought they had been 
invited by me, and when she discovered that they had not 
33 505 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 


there was a suppressed row, she calling upon them to leave 
the box and they nonchalantly refusing to stir from their 
seats, pleading that they meant to stay only as long as 
there was no one else to occupy them. Our box was be- 
ginning to attract attention. There were angry outcries of 
“’S-sh!” “Shut up!” Matilda looked at me sympa- 
thetically and we exchanged smiles. Finally an usher came 
into our box and the two intruders were ejected. 

When the ciirtain had dropped on the first act Matilda 
invited me into her box. When I entered it she introduced 
me to her husband and her other companions as “a fellow- 
townsman” of hers. 

Seen at close range, her husband looked much younger 
than she, but it did not take me long to discover that he 
was wrapped up in her. His beard was smaller and more 
neatly trimmed than it had looked at the Cooper Institute 
meeting, but it still iU became him. He had an un- 
sophisticated smile, which I thought suggestive of a man 
playing on a flute and which emphasized the discrepancy 
between his weak face and his reputation for pluck. 

An intermission in a Jewish theater is almost as long as 
an act. During the first few minutes of our chat Matilda 
never alluded to Antomir nor to what had happened between 
us at Cooper Institute. She made merry over the adver- 
tisements on the curtain and over the story of the play, 
explaining that the box had been forced on one of her 
companions and that they had all come to see what a 
“historic opera” was like. She commented upon the mu- 
sicians, who were playing a Jewish melody, and on some of 
the scenes that were being enacted in the big auditorium. 
The crowd was buzzing and smiling good-hiunoredly, with 
a general air of family-like sociability, some eating apples 
or candy. The faces of some of the men were much in need 
of a shave. Most of the women were in shirt-waists. 
Altogether the audience reminded one of a crowd at a 
picnic. A boy tottering under the weight of a basket laden 
with candy and fruit was singing his wares. A pretty 
young woman stood in the center aisle near the second row 
of seats, her head thrown back, her eyes fixed on the first 
balcony, her plump body swaying and swaggering to the 
music. One man, seated in a box across the theater from 
us, was trying to speak to somebody in the box above ours. 

506 


EPISODES OF A LONELY LIFE 

We could not hear what he said, but his mimicry was 
eloquent enough. Holding out a box of candy, he was 
facetiously offering to shoot some of its contents into the 
mouth of the person he was addressing. One woman, in 
an orchestra seat near our box, was discussing the play with 
a woman in front of her. She could.be heard all over the 
theater. She was in ecstasies over the prima donna. 

“I tell you she can kill a person with her singing,” 
she said, admiringly. “She tugs me by the heart and 
makes it melt. I never felt so heartbroken in my life. 
May she live long.” 

This was the imst opportunity I had liad to take a good 
look at Matilda since she had come to New York; for our 
first meeting had been so brief and so embarrassing to me 
that I had come away from it without a clear impression of 
her appearance. 

At first I found it difficult to look her in the face. The 
passionate kisses I had given her twenty-three years before 
seemed to be staring me out of countenance. She, how- 
ever, was perfectly unconstrained and smiled and laughed 
with contagious exuberance. As we chatted I now and 
again grew absent-minded, indulging in a mental comparison 
between the woman who was talking to me and the one who 
had made me embrace her and so cruelly trifled with my 
passion shortly before she raised the money for my journey 
to America. The change that the years had wrought in her 
appearance was striking, and yet it was the same Matilda. 
Her brown eyes were still sparkingly full of life and her 
mouth retained the sensuous expression of her youth. 
This and her abrupt gestures gave her provocative charm. 

Nevertheless, she left me calm. It was an indescribable 
pleasure to be with her, but my love for her was as dead as 
were the days when I lodged in a synagogue. She never 
alluded to those days. To listen to her, one would have 
thought that we had been seeing a great deal of each other 
all along, and that small talk was the most natural kind of 
conversation for us to carry on. 

All at once, and quite irrelevantly, she said: “I am 
awfully glad to see you again. I did not treat you prop- 
erly that time — at the meeting, I mean. Afterward I was 
very sorry.” 

“Were you?” I asked, flippantly. 

507 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 


“I wanted to write you, to ask you to come to see me, 
but — ^well, you know how it is. Tell me something about 
yourself. At this minute the twenty-three years seem like 
twenty-three weeks. But this is no time to talk about it. 
One wants hours, not a minute or two. I know, of course, 
that you are a rich man. Are you a happy man? But, 
no, don’t answer now. The curtain will soon rise. Go 
back to your box, and come in again after the next act. 
Will you?” 

She ordered me about as she had done during my stay 
at her mother’s house, which offended and pleased me at 
once. Diuing the whole of the second act I looked at the 
stage without seeing or hearing anything. The time when 
I fell in love with Matilda sprang into life again. It really 
seemed as though the twenty-three years were twenty- 
three weeks. My mother’s death, her funeral; Abner’s 
Court; the uniformed old furrier with the side-whiskers, 
his wife with her crutches; Naphtali with his curly hair 
and near-sighted eyes; Reb Sender, his wife, the bully of 
the old synagogue; Matilda’s mother, and her old servant — 
all the human figures and things that filled the eventful 
last two years of my life at home loomed up with striking 
vividness before me. 

Matilda’s affable greeting and her intimate brief talk 
were a surprise to me. Did I appeal to her as the fellow 
who had once kissed her? Had she always remembered 
me with a gleam of romantic interest? Did I stir her 
merely as she stirred me — as a living fragment of her past? 
Or was she trying to cultivate me in the professional inter- 
ests of her husband, who was practising medicine in Harlem? 

When the cm*tain had fallen again Matilda made her 
husband change seats with me. I was to stay by her side 
through the rest of the performance. The partition be- 
tween the two boxes being only waist-high, the two parties 
were practically joined into one and everybody was sat- 
isfied — everybody except Mrs. Chaikin. 

“I suppose our company isn’t good enough for Mr. 
Levinsky,” she said, aloud. 

When the performance was over we all went to Lorber’s 
— the most pretentious restaurant on the East Side. 
Matilda and I were mostly left to ourselves. We talked of 
our native town and of her pious mother, who had died a 

508 


EPISODES OF A LONELY LIFE 


few years before, but we carefully avoided the few weeks 
which I had spent in her mother’s house, when Matilda 
had encouraged my embraces. In answer to my questions 
she told me something of her own and her husband’s 
revolutionary exploits. She spoke boastfully and yet re- 
luctantly of these things, as if it were a sacrilege to discuss 
them with a man who was, after all, a “money-bag.” 

My impression was that they lived very modestly and 
that they were more interested in their socialist affairs than 
in their income. My theory that she wanted her husband 
to profit by her acquaintance with me seemed to be ex- 
ploded. She reminded me of Elsie and her whole-hearted 
devotion to socialism. We mostly spoke in Yiddish, and 
our Antomi enunciation was like a bond of kinship between 
us, and yet I felt that she spoke to me in the patronizing, 
didactic^ way which one adopts with a foreigner, as 
though the world to which she belonged was one whose 
interests were beyond my comprehension. 

She inquired about my early struggles and subsequent 
successes. I told her of the studies I had pursued before I 
went into business, of the English classics I had read, and 
of my acquaintance with Spencer. 

“ Do you remember what you told me about becoming an 
educated man?” I said, eagerly. “ Yoiu: words were always 
ringing in my ears. It was owing to them that I studied 
for admission to college. I was crazy to be a college man, 
but fate ordained otherwise. To this day I regret it.” 

In dwelhng on my successes I felt that I was too effusive 
and emphatic; but I went on bragging in spite of myself. 
I tried to correct the impression I was malang on her by 
boasting of the sums I had given to charity, but this made 
me feel smaller than ever. However, my talk did not 
seem to arouse any criticism in her mind. She listened to 
me as she might to the tale of a child. 

Referring to my unmarried state, she said, with unfeigned 
S3unpathy: “ This is really no life. You ought to get mar- 
ried.” And she added, gaily, “If you ever marry, you 
mustn’t neglect to invite me to the wedding.” 

“I certai^y won’t; you may be sure of that,” I said. 

“You must come to see me. I’ll call you up on the 
telephone some day and we’ll arrange it.” 

“I shall be very glad, indeed.” 

509 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 


I departed in a queer state of mind. Her present iden- 
tity failed to touch a romantic chord in my heart. She 
was simply a memory, like Dora. But as a memory she had 
rekindled some of the old yearning in me. I was still in 
love with Anna, but at this moment I was in love both 
with her and with the Matilda of twenty-three years before. 
But this intense feeling for Matilda as a monument of my 
past self did not last two days. 

The invitation she had promised to telephone never came. 

I came across a man whom I used to see at the Tevkins’, 
and one of the things he told me was that Anna had re- 
cently married a high-school teacher. 


CHAPTER III 



'HE real estate boom collapsed. The cause of the 


1 catastrophe lay in the nature, or rather in the un- 
naturalness, of the “get-rich-quick” epidemic. Its im- 
mediate cause, however, was a series of rent strikes inspired 
and engineered by the Jewish socialists through their 
Yiddish daily. One of the many artificialities of the situa- 
tion had been a progressive inflation of rent values. Houses 
had been continually changing hands, being bought, not as 
a permanent investment, but for speculation, whereupon 
each successive purchaser would raise rents as a means of 
increasing the market price of his temporary property. 
And so the socialists had organized a crusade that filled 
the municipal courts with dispossess cases and tinned the 
boom into a panic. 

Hundreds of people who had become rich overnight now 
became worse than penniless overnight. The Ghetto was 
full of dethroned “kings for a day only.” It seemed as if 
it aU really had been a dream. 

One of the men whose quickly made little fortune burst 
like a bubble was poor Tevlan. I wondered how his 
children took the socialist rent strikes. 

Nor did I escape uninjured when the crisis broke loose. 
I still had a considerable sum in real estate, all my efforts 
to extricate it having proved futile. My holdings were 
rapidly depreciating. In hundreds of cases similar to mine 
equities were wiped out through the speculators’ inability 
to pay interest on mortgages or even taxes. To be sure, 
things did not come to such a pass in my case, but then some 
of the city lots or improved property in which I was in- 
terested had been hit so hard as to be no longer worth the 
mortgages on them. 

Volodsky lost almost everything except his courage and 
speculative spirit. 


511 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 


“Oh, it will come back,” he once said to me, speaking of 
the boom. 

When I urged that it had been an unnatural growth 
he retorted that it was the collapse of the boom which was 
unnatiu*al. He was scheming some sort of syndicate again. 

“It requires no money to make a lot of money,” he said. 
“All it does require is brains and some good luck.” 

Nevertheless, he coveted some of my money for his new 
scheme. He did not succeed with me, but he found other 
' ‘ angels. ’ ’ He was now quite in his element in the American 
atmosphere of breathless enterprise and breakneck speed. 
When the violence of the crisis had quieted down building 
operations were resumed on a more natural basis. Men like 
Volodsky, with hosts of carpenters, bricklayers, plumbers — 
all Russian or Galician Jews — continued to build up the 
Bronx, Washington Heights, and several sections of 
Brooklyn. Vast areas of meadowland and rock were 
turned by them, as by a magic wand, into densely popu- 
lated avenues and streets of brick and mortar. Under the 
spell of their activity cities larger than Odessa sprang up 
within the confines of Greater New York in the course of 
three or four years. 

Mrs. Chaikin came out of her speculations more than 
safe. She and her husband, who is still in my employ, own 
half a dozen tenement-houses. One day, on the first of the 
month, I met her in the street with a large hand-bag ?nd 
a dignified mien. She was out collecting rent. 


CHAPTER IV 


I T was the spring of 1910. The twenty-fifth anniversary 
of my coming to America was drawing near. 

The day of an immigrant’s arrival in his new home is 
like a birthday to him. Indeed, it is more apt to claim his 
attention and to warm his heart than his real birthday. 
Some of our immigrants do not even know their birthday. 
But they all know the day when they came to America. It 
is Landing Day with red capital letters. This, at any rate, 
is the case with me. The day upon which I was born often 
passes without my being aware of it. The day when I 
landed in Hoboken, on the other hand, never arrives with- 
out my being fuUy conscious of the place it occupies in the 
calendar of my life. Is it because I do not remember my- 
self coming into the world, while I do remember my arrival 
in America? However that may be, the advent of that day 
invariably puts me in a sentimental mood which I never 
experience on the day of my birth. 

It was 1910, then, and the twenty-fifth anniversary of 
my coming was near at hand. Thoughts of the past &led 
me with mixed joy and sadness. I was overcome with a 
desire to celebrate the day. But with whom? Usually 
this is done by “ship brothers,” as East-Siders call fellow- 
immigrants who arrive here on the same boat. It came 
back to me that I had such a ship brother, and that it was 
Gitelson. Poor Gitelson! He was still working at his 
trade. I had not seen him for years, but I had heard 
of him from time to time, and I knew that he was em- 
ployed by a ladies’ tailor at custom work somewhere in 
Brooklyn. (The custom-tailoring shop he had once started 
for himself had proved a failirre.) Also, I knew how to 
reach a brother-in-law of his. The upshot was that I 
made an appointment with Gitelson for him to be at 
my office on the great day at 12 o’clock. I did so with- 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 


out specifying the object of the meeting, but I expected 
that he would know. 

Finally the day arrived. It was a few minutes to 12. 
I was alone in my private office, all in a fidget, as if the 
meeting I was expecting were a love-tryst. Reminiscences 
and reflections were flitting incoherently through my mind. 
Some of the events of the day which I was about to celebrate 
loomed up like a ship seen in the distance. My eye swept 
the expensive furniture of my office. I thought of the way 
my career had begun. I thought of the Friday evening 
when I met Gitelson on Grand Street, he an American 
dandy and I in tatters. The fact that it was upon his 
advice and with his ten dollars that I had become a cloak- 
maker stood out as large as life before me. A great feeling 
of gratitude welled up in me, of gratitude and of pity for my 
tattered self of those days. Dear, kind Gitelson! Poor 
fellow! He was still working with his needle. I was 
seized with a desire to do something for him. I had never 
paid him those ten dollars. So I was going to do so with 
“substantial interest'* now. “I shall spend a few hundred 
dollars on him — ^nay, a few thousand!” I said to myself. 
“I shall buy him a small business. Let him end his days 
in comfort. Let him know that his ship brother is like a 
real brother to him.” 

It was twenty minutes after 12 and I was still waiting 
for the telephone to announce him. My suspense became 
insupportable. “Is he going to disappoint me, the idiot?” 
I wondered. Presently the telephone trilled. I seized the 
receiver. 

“Mr. Gitelson wishes to see Mr. Levinsky,” came the 
familiar pipe of my switchboard girl. “He says he has 
an appointment — ” 

“Let him come in at once,” I flashed. 

Two minutes later he was in my room. His forelock 
was still the only bunch of gray hair on his head, but his 
face was pitifully wizened. He was quite neatly dressed, 
as trained tailors will be, even when they are poor, and at 
some distance I might have failed to perceive any change 
in him. At close range, however, his appearance broke 
my heart. 

“Do you know what sort of a day this is?” I asked, after 
shaidng his hand warmly. 

SU 


EPISODES OF A LONELY LIFE 

“I should think I did,” he answered, sheepishly. 
“Twenty-five years ago at this time — ” 

He was at a loss for words. 

“Yes, it’s twenty-five years, Gitelson,” I rejoined. I 
w^ going to indulge in reminiscences, to compare memories 
with him, but changed my mind. I would rather not speak 
of our Landing Day until we were seated at a dining-table 
and after we had drunk its toast in champagne. 

“Come, let us have lunch together,” I said, simply. 

I took him to the Waldorf-Astoria, where a table had 
been reserved for us in a snug comer. 

Gitelson was extremely bashftd and his embarrassment 
infected me. He was apparently at a loss to know what to 
do with the various glasses, knives, forks. It was evident 
that he had never sat at such a table before. The French 
waiter, who was silently officious, seemed to be inwardly 
laughing at both of us. At the bottom of my heart I cow 
before waiters to this day. Their white shirt-fronts, reti- 
cence, and pompous bows make me feel as if they saw 
through me and ridiculed my ways. They make me feel 
as if my expensive clothes and ways iU became me. 

“Here is good health, Gitelson,” I said in plain old 
Yiddish, as we touched glasses. “Let us drink to the day 
when we arrived in Castle Garden.” 

There was something forced, studied, in the way I 
uttered these words. I was disgusted with my own voice. 
Gitelson only simpered. He drained his glass, and the 
diampagne, to which he was not accustomed, made him 
tipsy at once. I tried to talk of our ship, of the cap he 
had lost, of his timidity when we had found ourselves in 
Castle Garden, of the policeman whom I asked to direct 
us. But Gitelson only nodded and grinned and tittered. 
I realized that I had made a mistake — that I should have 
taken him to a more modest restaurant. But then the 
chasm between him and me seemed to be too wide for us 
to celebrate as ship brothers in any place. 

“By the way, Gitelson, I owe you something,” I said, 
producing a ten-dollar bill. “It was with your ten dollars 
that I learned to be a cloak-operator and entered the cloak 
trade. Do you remember ?” I was going to add something 
about my desire to help him in some substantial way, but 
he interrupted me. 

SIS 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 


“Sure, I do,” he said, with inebriate shamefacedness, 
as he received the money and shoved it into the inside 
pocket of his vest. ‘‘It has brought you good luck, hasn’t 
it? And how about the interest? He, he, he! You’ve 
kept it over twenty-three years. The interest must be 
qtiite a little. He, he, he!” 

‘‘Of course I’ll pay you the interest, and more, too. 
You shall get a check.” 

‘‘Oh, I was only joking.” 

‘‘But I am not joking. You’re going to get a check, all 
right.” 

He revolted me. 

I made out a check for two hundred dollars; tore it and 
made out one for five hundred. 

He flushed, scanned the figure, giggled, hetsiated, and 
finally folded the check and pushed it into his inner vest 
pocket, thanking me with drunken ardor. 

Some time later I was returning to my office, my heart 
heavy with self-disgust and sadness. In the evening I went 
home, to the loneliness of my beautiful hotel lodgings. My 
heart was still heavy with distaste and sadness. 


CHAPTER V 


G USSIE, the finisher-girl to whom I had once made 
love with a view to marrying her for her money, 
worked in the vicinity of my factory and I met her from 
time to time on the Avenue. We kept up our familiar 
tone of former days. We would pause, exchange some ban- 
ter, and go our several ways. She was over fifty now. 
She looked haggard and dried up and her hair was copiously 
shot with gray. 

One afternoon she told me she had changed her shop, 
naming her new employer. 

“Is it a good place to work in?” I inquired. 

“Oh, it’s as good or as bad as any other place,” she re- 
plied, with a gay smile. 

“Mine is good,” I jested. 

“That’s what they all say.” 

“Come to work for me and see for yourself.” 

“Will I get good wages?” 

“Yes.” 

“How much?” 

“Any price you name.” 

“Look at him,” she said, as though addressing a third 
person. ‘ ‘ Look at the new millionaire. ’ ’ 

“It might have been all yoturs. But you did not think 
I was good enough for you.” 

“You can keep it all to yourself and welcome.” 

“Well, will you come to work?” 

“You can’t do without me, can you? He can’t get 
finisher-girls, the poor fellow. Well, how much will you 
pay me?” 

We agreed upon the price, but on taking leave she said, 
“I was joking.” 

“What do you mean? Don’t you want to work for me, 
Gussie?” 

517 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 


She shook her head. 

“Why?” 

“ I don’t want you to think I begrudge you your millions. 
We’ll be better friends at a distance. Good-by.” 

“You’re a funny girl, Gussie. Good-by.” 

A short time after this conversation I had trouble with 
the Cloak-makers’ Union, of which Gussie was one of the 
oldest and most loyal members. 

The cause of the conflict was an operator named Blitt, a 
native of Antomir, who had been working in my shop for 
some months. He was a spare little fellow with a nose so 
compressed at the nostrils that it looked as though it was 
inhaling some shaip, pleasant odor. It gave his face a droll 
appearance, but his eyes, dark and large, were very attrac- 
tive. I had known him as a small boy in my birth- 
place, where he belonged to a much better family than I. 

When Bhtt was invited to join the Levinsky Antomir 
Society of my employees he refused. It turned out that 
he was one of the active spirits of the union and also an 
ardent member of the Socialist party. His foreman had 
not the courage to discharge him, because of my weU- 
known predilection for natives of Antomir, so he reported 
him to me as a dangerous fellow. 

“ He isn’t going to blow up the building, is he?” I said, 
lightly. 

“But he may do other mischief. He’s one of tiie leaders 
of the union.” 

“Let him lead.” 

The next time I looked at Blitt I felt uncomfortable. 
His refusal to join my Antomir organization hurt me, and 
his activities in the union and at socialist gatherings 
kindled my rancor. His compressed nose revolted me now. 
I wanted to get rid of him. 

Not that I had remained inflexible in my views regarding 
the distribution of wealth in the world. Some of the best- 
known people in the country were openly taking the ground 
that the poor man was not getting a “square deal.” To 
sympathize with organized labor was no longer “bad 
form,” some society women even doing picket duty for 
Jewish factory-girls out on strike. Socialism, which used 
to be declared utterly un-American, had come to be almost 
a vogue. American colleges were leavened with it, while 

518 


EPISODES OF A LONELY LIFE 


American magazines were building up stupendous circula- 
tions by exposing the corruption of the mighty. Public 
opinion had, during the past two decades, undergone a 
striking change in this respect. I had watched that 
change and I could not but be influenced by it. For all 
my theorizing about the “survival of the fittest “ and the 
“dying off of the weaklings,” I could not help feeling that, 
in an abstract way, the socialists were not altogether wrong. 
The case was different, however, when I considered it in 
connection with the concrete struggle of trade-unionism 
(which among the Jewish immigrants was practically but 
another name for socialism) against low wages or high rent. 
I must confess, too, that the defeat with which I had met 
at Tevkin’s house had greatly intensified my hostility to 
socialists. As I have remarked in a previous chapter, I 
ascribed my fiasco to the socialist atmosphere that sur- 
rounded Anna. I was embittered. 

The socialists were constantly harping on “ class struggle,” 
“class antagonism,” “class psychology.” I would dismiss 
it all as absurd, but I did hate the trade-unions, particularly 
those of the East Side. Altogether there was too much 
socialism among the masses of the Ghetto, I thought. 

Blitt now seemed to be' the embodiment of this “class 
antagonism.” 

“Ah, he won’t join my Antomir Society!” I would storm 
and fume and writhe inwardly. “That’s a tacit protest 
against the whole society as an organization of ‘slaves.’ 
It means that the society makes meek, obedient servants of 
my employees and helps me fleece them. As if they did 
not earn in my shop more than they would anywhere else! 
As if they could all get steady work outside my place! 
And what about the loans and all sorts of other favors 
they get from me? If they worked for their own fathers 
they could not be treated better than they are treated 
here.” I felt outraged. 

I rebuked myself for making much ado about nothing. 
Indeed, this was a growing weakness with me. Some trifle 
unworthy of consideration would get on my nerves and 
bother me like a grain of sand in the eye. Was I getting 
old? But, no, I felt in the prime of life, full of vigor, and 
more active and more alive to the passions than a youth. 

Whenever I chanced to be on the floor where Blitt worked 

519 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 


I woiild avoid looking in his direction. His presence 
irritated me. “How ridiculous,” I often thought. “One 
would imagine he’s my conscience and that’s why I want 
to get rid of him.” As a consequence, I dared not send him 
away, and, as a consequence of this, he irritated me more 
than ever. 

Finally, one afternoon, acting on the spur of the moment, 
I called his foreman to me and told him to discharge him. 

A committee of the union called on me. I refused to 
deal with them. The upshot was a strike — ’not merely for 
the return of Blitt to my employment, but also for higher 
wages and the recognition of the union. The organization 
was not strong, and only a small number of my men were 
members of it, but when these went out all the others fol- 
lowed their contagious example, the members of my 
Antomir Society not excepted. 

The police gave me ample protection, and there were 
thousands of cloak-makers who remained outside the 
union, so that I soon had all the “hands” I wanted;, but 
the conflict caused me all sorts of other mortifications. 
For one thing, it gave me no end of hostile publicity. The 
socialist Yiddish daily, which had an overwhelmingly wide 
circulation now, printed reports of meetings at which I had 
been hissed and hooted. I was accused of bribing corrupt 
politicians who were supposed to help me suppress the 
strike by means of police clubs. I was charged with bring- 
ing disgrace upon the Jewish people. 

The thought of Tevkin reading these reports and of Anna 
hearing of them hurt me cruelly. I could see Moissey 
reveling in the hisses with which my name was greeted. 
And Elsie? Did she take part in some of the demonstra- 
tions against me? Were she and Anna collecting funds for 
my striking employees? 

The reports in the American papers also were inclined 
to favor the strikers. Public opinion was against me. 
What galled me worse than all, perhaps, was the sympathy 
shown for the strikers by some German- Jewish financiers 
and philanthropists, men whose acquaintance it was the 
height of my ambition to cultivate. All of which only 
served to pour oil into the flames of my hatred for the union. 

Bender implored me to settle the strike. 

“ The union^doesn’t amount to a row of pins,” he urged. 

520 


EPISODES OF A LONELY LIFE 

“A week or two after we settle, things will get back to their 
old state.” 

“Where’s your backbone, Bender?” I exploded. “If 
you had your way, those fellows would run the whole busi- 
ness. You have no sense of dignity. And yet you were 
bom in America.” 

I was always accompanied by a detective. 

One of the strikers was in my pay. Every morning at a 
fixed hotu: he would call at a certain hotel, where he re- 
ported the doings of the organization to Bender and myself. 
One of the things I thus learned was that the union was hard 
up and constantly exacting loans from Gussie and several 
other members who had savings-bank accounts. One day, 
however, when the secretary appealed to her for a further 
loan with which to pay fines for arrested pickets and assist 
some of the neediest strikers, she flew into a passion. 
“What do you want of me, murderers that you are?” she 
cried, bursting into tears. “Haven’t I done enough? 
Have you no hearts?” 

A minute or two later she yielded, 

“Bleed me, bleed me, cruel people that you are!” she 
said, pointing at her heart, as she started toward her 
savings bank. 

I was moved. When my spy had departed I paced the 
floor for some minutes. Then, pausing, I smilingly de- 
clared to Bender my determination to ask the union for a 
committee. He was over j oyed and shook my hand solemnly. 

One of my bookkeepers was to communicate with the 
strike committee in the afternoon. Two hours before the 
time set for their meeting I saw in one of the afternoon 
papers an interview with the president of the union. His 
statements were so unjust to me, I thought, and so bitter, 
that the fighting blood was again up in my veins. 

But the image of Gussie giving her hard-earned money 
to help the strikers haunted me. The next morning I 
went to Atlantic City for a few days, letting Bender “do 
as he pleased.” The strike was compromised, the men 
obtaining a partial concession of their demands and Blitt 
waiving his claim to his former job. 

34 


CHAPTER VI 


M y business continued to grow. My consumption of 
raw material reached gigantic dimensions, so much 
so that at times, when I liked a pattern, I would buy up 
the entire output and sell some of it to smaller manu- 
facturers at a profit. 

Gradually I abandoned the higher grades of goods, de- 
veloping my whole business along the lines of popular 
prices. There are two cloak-and-suit houses that make a 
specialty of costly garments. These enjoy high reputations 
for taste and are the real arbiters of fashion in this country, 
one of the two being known in the trade as Little Paris; 
but the combined volume of business of both these firms 
is much smaller than mine. 

My deals with one mill alone — ^the largest in the country 
and the one whose head had come to my rescue when my 
affairs were on the brink of a precipice — ^now exceeded a 
million dollars at a single purchase to be delivered in seven 
months. The mills often sell me at a figure considerably 
lower than the general market price. They do so, first, 
because of the enormous quantities I buy, and, second, be- 
cause of the “boost” a fabric receives from the very fact 
of being handled by my house. One day, for instance, 
I said to the president of a certain mill: “I like this cloth 
of yottrs. I feel like making a big thing of it, provided 
you can let me have an inside figure.” We came to terms, 
and I gave him an advance order for nine thousand pieces. 
When smaller manufacturers and department-store buyers 
heard that I had bought an immense quantity of that pat- 
tern its success was practically established. As a con- 
sequence, the mill was in a position to raise the price of the 
cloth to others, so that it amply made up for the low figure 
at which it had sold the goods to me. 

Judged by the market price of the raw material, my profit 
522 


EPISODES OF A LONELY LIFE 


on a garment did not exceed fifty cents. But I paid for the 
raw material seventy-five cents less than the market price, 
so that my total profit was one dollar and twenty-five cents. 
Still, there have been instances when I lost seventy-five 
thousand dollars in one month because goods fell in price 
or because a certain style failed to move and I had to sell 
it below cost to get it out of the way. To be sure, cheaper 
goods are less likely to be affected by the caprices of style 
than higher grades, which is one of several reasons why 
I prefer to produce garments of popular prices. 

I do not employ my entire capiti in my cloak business, 
half of it, or more, being invested in ‘ ‘ quick assets. ’ ’ Should 
I need more ready cash than I have, I could procure it at a 
lower rate than what those assets bring me. I can get 
half a million dollars, from two banks, without rising from 
my desk — ^by merely calling those banks up on the tele- 
phone. For this I pay, say, three and a h^f or four per 
cent., for I am a desirable customer at the banks; and, as 
my quick assets bring me an average of five per cent., I 
make at least one per cent, on the money. 

Another way of making my money breed money is by 
early payments to the mills. Not only can I do without 
their credit, but I can afford to pay them six months in 
advance. This gives me an “anticipation” allowance at 
the rate of six per cent, per annum, while money costs me 
at the banks three or four per cent, per annum. 

All this is good sport. 

I own considerable stock in the very mills with which 
I do business, which has a certain moral effect on their 
relations with my house. For a similar purpose I am a 
shareholder in the large mail-order houses that buy cloaks 
and suits of me. I hold shares of some department stores 
also, but of late I have grown somewhat shy of this kind of 
investment, the future of a department store being as 
uncertain as the future of the neighborhood in which it is 
located. Mail-order houses, on the other hand, have 
the whole country before them, and their overwhelming 
growth during past years was one of the conspicuous 
phenomena in the business life of the nation. I love to 
watch their operations spread over the map, and I love 
to watch the growth of American cities, the shifting of 
their shopping centers, the consequent vicissitudes, the 

523 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 


decline of some houses, the rise of others. American Jews 
of German origin are playing a foremost part in the retail 
business of the country, large or small, and our people, 
Russian and Galician Jews, also are making themselves felt 
in it, being, in many cases, in partnership with Gentiles or 
with their own coreligionists of German descent. The 
king of the great mail-order business, a man with an annual 
income of many millions, is the son of a Polish Jew. He is 
one of the two richest Jews in America, having built up his 
vast fortune in ten or &teen years. As I have said before, 
I know hundreds, if not thousands, of merchants, Jews 
and Gentiles, throughout this country and Canada, so I 
like to keep track of their careers. 

This, too, is good sport. 

Of course, it is essential to study the business map in the 
interests of my own establishment, but I find intellectual 
excitement in it as well, and, after all, I am essentially 
an intellectual man, I think. 

There are retailers in various sections of the country 
whom I have helped financially — ^former buyers, for ex- 
ample, who went into business on their own hook with my 
assistance. This is good business, for while these mer- 
chants must be left free to buy in the open market, they 
naturally give my house precedence. But here again I 
must say in fairness to myself that business interest is not 
the only motive that induces me to do them these favors. 
Indeed, in some cases I do it without even expecting to get 
my money back. It gives me moral satisfaction, for which 
money is no measure of value. 


CHAPTER VII 


A m I happy? 

There are moments when I am overwhelmed by a 
sense of my success and ease. I become aware that 
thousands of things which had formerly been forbidden fruit 
to me are at my command now. I distinctly recall that 
crushing sense of being debarred from everything, and 
then I feel as though the whole world were mine. One 
day I paused in front of an old East Side restaurant that 
I had often passed in my days of need and despair. The 
feeling of desolation and envy with which I used to peek 
in its windows came back to me. It gave me pangs of self- 
pity for my past and a thrilling sense of my present power. 
The prices that had once been prohibitive seemed so 
wretchedly low now. On another occasion I came across a 
Canal Street merchant of whom I used to buy goods for 
my push-cart. I said to myself: “There was a time when 
I used to implore this man for ten dollars’ worth of goods, 
when I regarded him as all-powerful and feared him. Now 
he would be happy to shake hands with me.” 

I recalled other people whom I used to fear and before 
whom I used to humiliate myself because of my poverty. 
I thought of the time when I had already entered the cloak 
business, but was struggling and squirming and constantly 
racking my brains for some way of raising a hundred dol- 
lars; when I would cringe with a certain East Side banker 
and vainly beg him to extend a small note of mine, and come 
away in a sickening state of despair. 

At this moment, as these memories were filing by me, I 
felt as though now there were nobody in the world who 
could inspire me with awe or render me a service. 

And yet in all such instances I feel a peculiar yearning 
for the very days when the doors of that restaurant were 
closed to me and when the Canal Street merchant was a 

525 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 


magnate of commerce in my estimation. Somehow, en- 
counters of this kind leave me dejected. The gloomiest 
past is dearer than the brightest present. In my case 
there seems to be a special reason for feeling this way. My 
sense of triumph is coupled with a brooding sense of 
emptiness and insignificance, of my lack of anything like a 
great, deep interest. 

I am lonely. Amid the pandemonium of my six hundred 
sewing-machines and the jingle of gold which they pour into 
my lap I feel the deadly silence of solitude. 

I spend at least one evening a week at the Benders’. 
I am fond of their children and I feel pleasantly at home at 
their house. I am a frequent caller at the Nodelmans’, and 
enjoy their hospitality even more than that of the Benders. 
I go to the opera, to the theaters, and to concerts, and never 
alone. There are merry suppers, and some orgies in which 
I take part, but when I go home I suffer a gnawing after- 
math of loneliness and desolation. 

I have a fine summer home, with servants, automobiles, 
and horses. I share it with the Bender family and we 
often have visitors from the city, but, no matter how large 
and gay the crowd may be, the country makes me sad. 

I know bachelors who are thoroughly reconciled to their 
solitude and even enjoy it. I am not. 

No, I am not happy. 

In the city I occupy a luxurious suite of rooms in a 
high-class hotel and keep an excellent chauffeur and valet. 
I give myself every comfort that money can buy. But 
there is one thing which I crave and which money cannot 
buy^ — ^happiness. 

Many a pretty girl is setting her cap at me, but I know 
that it is only my dollars they want to marry. Nor do 
I care for any of them, while the woman to whom my heart 
is calling — ^Anna — is married to another man. 

I dream of manying some day. I dread to think of dying 
a lonely man. 

Sometimes I have a spell of morbid amativeness and seem 
to be falling in love with woman after woman. There are 
periods when I can scarcely pass a woman in the street 
without scanning her face and figure. When I see the 
crowds returning from work in the cloak-and-waist district 
I often pause to watch the groups of girls as they walk 


EPISODES OF A LONELY LIFE 

apart from the men. Their keeping together, as if they 
formed a separate world full of its own interests and secrets, 
makes a pecitliar appeal to me. 

^ Once, in Florida, I thought I was falling in love with a 
rich Jewish girl whose face had a bashful expression of a 
peculiar type. There are different sorts of bashfulness. 
This girl had the bashfulness of sin, as I put it to myself. 
She looked as if her mind harbored illicit thoughts which 
she was trying to conceal. Her blushes seemed to be full 
of sex and her eyes full of secrets. She was not a pretty 
girl at all, but her “guilty look” disturbed me as long as 
we were stopping in the same place. 

But through all these ephemeral infatuations and in- 
terests I am in love with Anna. 

From time to time I decide to make a “sensible” mar- 
riage, and study this woman or that as a possible candidate, 
but so far nothing has come of it. 

There was one woman whom I might have married if she 
had not been a Gentile — one of the very few who lived in 
the family hotel in which I had my apartments. At first 
I set her down for an adventuress seeking the acquaintance 
of rich Jews for some sinister purpose. But I was mistaken. 
She was a woman of high character. Moreover, she and 
her aged mother, with whom she lived, had settled in that 
hotel long before it came to be patronized by our people. 
She was a widow of over forty, with a good, intellectual face, 
well read in the better sense of the term, and no fool. 
Many of our people in the hotel danced attendance upon 
her because she was a Gentile woman, but all of them were 
really fond of her. The great point was that she seemed 
to have a sincere liking for om people. This and the 
peculiar way her shoulders would shake when she laughed 
was, in fact, what first drew me to her. We grew chummy 
and I spent many an hour in her company. 

In my soliloquies I often speculated and theorized on the 
question of .proposing to her. I saw clearly that it would 
be a mistake. It was not the faith of my fathers that was 
in the way. It was that medieval prejudice against our 
people which makes so many marriages between Jew and 
Gentile a failure. It frightened me. 

One evening we sat chatting in the bright lobby of the 

hotel, discussing human nature, and she telling me some- 

$37 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 

tilin g of the good novels she had read. After a brief pause 
I said: 

“I enjoy these talks immensely. I don’t think there is 
another person with whom I so love to talk of human 
beings.” 

She bowed with a smile that shone of something more 
than mere appreciation of the compliment. And then I 
uttered in the simplest possible accents: 

“It’s really a pity that there is the chasm of race between 
us. Otherwise I don’t see why we couldn’t be happy 
together.” 

I was in an adventurous mood and ready, even eager, 
to marry her. But her answer was a laugh, as if she took 
it for a joke; and, though I seemed to sense intimacy and 
encouragement in that laugh, it gave me pause. I felt 
on the brink of a fatal blunder, and I escaped before it was 
too late. 

“But then,” I hastened to add, “real happiness in a case 
like this is perhaps not the rule, but the exception. That 
chasm continues to yawn throughout the couple’s married 
life, I suppose.” 

“That’s an interesting point of view,” she said, a non- 
committal smile on her lips. 

She tactfully forbore to take up the discussion, and I 
soon dropped the subject. We remained friends. 

It was this woman who got me interested in good, mod- 
em fiction. The books she selected for me interested me 
greatly. Then it was that the remarks I had heard from 
Moissey Tevldn came to my mind. They were illuminating. 

Most of the people at my hotel are German-American 
Jews. I know other Jews of this class. I contribute to 
their charity institutions. Though an atheist, I belong to 
one of their synagogues. Nor can I plead the special feel- 
ing which had partly accounted for my visits at the syna- 
gogue of the Sons of Antomir while I was engaged to 
Kaplan’s daughter. I am a member of that synagogue 
chiefly because it is a fashionable synagogue. I often con- 
vict myself of ciurying favor with the German Jews. But 
then German-American Jews curry favor with Portuguese- 
American Jews, just as we all curry favor with Gentiles and 
as American Gentiles curry favor with the aristocracy pf 
Europe, 

5?8 


EPISODES OF A LONELY LIFE 

I often long for a heart-to-heart talk with some of the 
people of my birthplace. I have tried to revive my old 
friendships with some of them, but they are mostly poor 
and my prosperity stands between us in many ways. 

Sometimes when I am alone in my beautiful apartments, 
brooding over these things and nursing my loneliness, I 
say to myself : 

“There are cases when success is a tragedy.’* 

There are moments when I regret my whole career, 
when my very success seems to be a mistake. 

I think that I was bom for a life of intellectual interest. 
I was certainly brought up for one. The day when that 
accident tinned my mind from college to business seems to 
be the most unfortunate day in my life. I think that I 
should be much happier as a scientist or writer, perhaps. 
I should then be in my natural element, and if I were doomed 
to loneliness I should have comforts to which I am now a 
stranger. That’s the way I feel every time I pass the 
abandoned old building of the City College. 

The business world contains plenty of successful men 
who have no brains. Why, then, should I ascribe my 
triiunph to -special ability? I should probably have made 
a much better college professor than a cloak-manufacturer, 
and should probably be a happier man, too. I know 
people who have inade much more money than I and 
whom I consider my inferiors in every respect. 

Many of our immigrants have distinguished themselves 
in science, music, or art, and these I envy far more than I do 
a billionaire. As an example of the successes achieved by 
Russian Jews in America in the last quarter of a centiuy 
it is often pointed out that the man who has built the 
greatest sky-scrapers in the country, including the Wool- 
worth Building, is a Russian Jew who came here a penniless 
boy. I cannot boast such distinction, but then I have 
helped build up'- one of the great industries of the United 
States, and this also is something to be proud of. But I 
should readily change places with the Russian Jew, a 
former • Talmud student like myself, who is the greatest 
physiologist in the New World, or with the Russian Jew 
who holds the foremost place among American song- 
writers and whose soulful compositions are sung in almost 
every English-speaking house in the world, I love music 

5^9 


THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY 


to madness. I yearn for the world of great singers, violin- 
ists, pianists. Several of the greatest of them are of my 
race and country, and I have met them, but all my ac- 
quaintance with them has brought me is a sense of being 
looked down upon as a money-bag striving to play the 
Maecenas. I had a similar experience with a sculptor, also 
one of our immigrants, an East Side boy who had met with 
sensational success in Paris and London. I had him make 
my bust. His demeanor toward me was all that could have 
been desired. We even cracked Yiddish jokes together and 
he hummed bits of synagogue music over his work, but I 
never left his studio without feeling cheap and wretched. 

When I think of these things, when I am in this sort of 
mood, I pity myself for a victim of circumstances. 

At the height of my business success I feel that if I 
had my life to live over again I should never think of a 
business career. 

I don’t seem to be able to get accustomed to my luxurious 
life. I am always more or less conscious of my good 
clothes, of the high quality of my office furniture, of the 
power I wield over the men in my pay. As I have said in 
another connection, I still have a lurking fear of restaurant 
waiters. 

I can never forget the days of my misery. I cannot 
escape from my old self. My past and my present do not 
comport well. David, the poor lad swinging over a 
Talmud voliime at the Preacher’s Synagogue, seems to have 
more in common with my inner identity than David 
Levinsky, the well-known cloak-manufacturer. 


THE END 









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